Keeping track of your money

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A Wisconsin Political Fix
not just another blog
May 2, 2010

By Bill Kraus


A largely unnoticed and unremarked upon drift of power has been taking place within our democratic system for more than 30 years.

It is mostly a result of the unintended consequences of the Watergate reforms. These reforms were meant to punish the political parties for multiple abuses of the powers that had accrued to them over time.

The punishment exceeded the crime by largely destroying the parties’ longstanding ability to recruit and slate candidates and to fund and manage their campaigns.

The reform took away the parties' near monopoly on funding campaigns, and all the other roles that attended that one went away as well.

The money got loose.

This meant that the people and organizations who had been funding candidacies indirectly could now fund them directly.

An era of entrepreneurial candidacies began and was quickly squelched by the legislative leaders whose ability to control their caucuses was eroded by the candidates’ new freedoms.

The leaders set up legislative campaign committees and re-funneled the money flow so it got to the candidates through them because they controlled these organizations instead of getting to the candidates directly. They became what the parties had been before they went too far. They became the rainmakers.

This restored and enhanced their power. Once they got their hands on the money they took over the responsibility to recruit and slate, fund and manage from the displaced and weakened parties.

Like most people and organizations who are given too much power they overplayed their hands. Toll booths were set up. State employees’ jobs were expanded to include campaign work. And jail sentences followed. But, oddly enough, the power which had fallen into the laps of the legislative leaders pretty much stayed there. The parties did not resurrect. The crucial flow of the serious campaign money was not redirected away from the leadership offices.

So now we have a new set of legislative leaders who have pretty much the same power those they replaced had and misused.

Proof of malfeasance is not offered, but a weakened and understaffed print press corps has raised questions about why some legislation disappeared into wastebaskets in the leadership offices and other less or equally worthy proposals got what can only be described as favorable treatment in the chaotic last days of the legislative session.

These stories are a valuable reminder that the most desirable side effect of having a vigorous free press is that its practitioners provide the great public service of seeing that those with power are turning square corners.

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Dying by the numbers

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A Wisconsin Political Fix
not just another blog
April 26, 2010

By Bill Kraus

Senate Bill 43 died quietly last week. If an important newspaper ran a news story about its demise, it didn’t come to my attention.

The bill was known by those familiar with it as “the disclosure bill.” What it says in essence is that if you want to participate in political campaigns with advertisements for or against a candidate, you must tell everyone where you got the money to pay for these advertisements.

The state Senate passed it with a substantial bi-partisan majority. It didn’t survive a trip to the Assembly. It died in the Speaker’s office.

A lot of important political players showed up for the funeral. Some came to mourn the passing and others came to make sure it was really dead.

The mourners were:

1. The Supreme Court, which urged disclosure as the real and really constitutional reform when it issued the decision on the Citizens United case which allowed corporations and unions to do the kind of campaign advertising heretofore prohibited.

2. The GOP stalwarts who have always been leery of spending limits, public funding, and other regulatory palliatives and whose war cry was, is, and always will be Disclosure is the Answer. The death of disclosure means they lose the chance to prove their assertion that this is the ideal and only required campaign reform.

3. Candidates who come under attack from single-issue (usually) zealots with money who have become eminent to dominant participants in political campaigns recently.

4. The press, which supports political openness on its own behalf and, with the notable exception of many editorial-page editors, pretty much ignored this companion political openness effort which would have shown who the participants in campaigns really are.

5. Fairness advocates, who pointed out that candidates must reveal where they get the money they spend to promote their candidacies, but their non-candidate enemies and opponents are under no such obligation.

The “Were glad you’re dead crowd” included:

1. Free-market fanatics, including our current governor, who kind of like the high-spending, raucous, media-driven, corruption inducing system.

2. Free-speech protectors who consider anonymity a necessary part of that guarantee. They do not think free speech is really free unless it can be done without attribution, so it is free from backlash by those who are offended by it.

3. Organizations whose members’ commercial interests are protected from the consequences of their spending on their political interests.

4. Anyone who wants to put their money where their mouth isn’t. Strange bedfellows of all kinds. Right-To-Life organizations must have a lot of them judging from their vehemence about keeping the identity of their funders secret. Collateral partisan groups like Club for Growth and The Greater Wisconsin Committee also fall into this category.

5. Candidates who expect to be rewarded for letting the foregoing beneficiaries of non-disclosure maintain their anonymity in the expectation that those who they protect from this unwanted publicity will lavish praise and money on them.


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The next governor's dilemmas

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A Wisconsin Political Fix
not just another blog
April 18, 2010

By Bill Kraus





Dilemma #1

When the state needs more revenues, the Democrats turn to the income tax for either a straight increase in the tax rate or a temporary surtax if the need looks like it is going to be temporary. The Republicans favor increases in the sales tax rate.

Since the onset of the taxophobia epidemic, this stalemate has been resolved by doing little or nothing about the big two revenue sources and sort of letting the property tax take the fall.

The reasoning(s) are: the sales tax is regressive, and the income tax is a deterrent to business executives and rich people who want to move here or stay here.

The flaw of letting nature take its course is that property taxes are regressive deterrents as well. The appeal to legislators and governors is that local governments assess them; they are somebody else’s problem.

Dilemma #2

Property tax dependency is really driven by the fact that it is used to fund K12 and technical college education. Education is constitutionally a state responsibility.

The most effective route to more tolerable property taxes is by expanding and increasing the sales tax and/or raising the income tax to pick up this state responsibility.

Dilemma #3

The biggest reason the state needs more revenues is we can’t cut our way to retaining our reputation as an education state without a new economy to buttress the traditional sources of jobs and money which are stagnating or faltering or both.

There are things that governments can do to build a new economy, but they are limited by resources and skills. What governments know how to do is welfare and infrastructure. Both can be used to create jobs, but both mostly require more tax revenues to do so. And, worse yet, the jobs they create are old economy jobs not new economy jobs.

There are, however, things governments can do to support and inspire and even help people in the private sector who do know how to create new economy jobs. The trouble is that this is high-risk stuff. A baseball analogy is apt. Even the best job creators bat something like .300, and that .300 is composed mostly of singles. Home runs are scarce.

Candidates are more likely to prefer other solutions. Lower taxes are said to be helpful in creating this new economy, and a friendly regulatory climate also has its adherents. Less spending without getting too specific about “on what?” gets a lot of lip service as well. The real stimulus, though, is something a revenue-short government doesn’t have much of: capital investment money.

Dilemma #4

The members of the Legislature who will have to approve whatever proposals the governor suggests to deal with these dilemmas are risk averse and occupy safe seats. This reduces appetites for anything adventuresome that might not work, disturb the status quo inordinately, or feed the anti-incumbent forces already in motion.

Dispassionate redistricting, anyone? It may be a necessary precursor to dilemma dismemberment.


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