Upcoming Referendums – So the city of Madison and the Madison School District are moving ahead with massive tax increases – asking the voters to approve their November referendums. If I recall, the school district already has six or seven tax increases that we are still paying for right now, and on top of that, there’s the Governor’s Frankenstein veto to create a ‘forever’ tax increase for schools. That means if this next tax increases pass, we’ll be paying for around 8 referendums. When does it stop? When will the liberal voters of the city stop handing the mayor another reward for poor financial management?
Why are the voters here so dumb? Well, I hate to shake you, but they’re not dumb. They’re just dependent on government, and they are rewarded for voting for bigger government and higher taxes. What conservatives in our county don’t understand is that before or after every tax increase, the liberals in city and county government reward their government employees with even higher wage increases. The county, if I recall, just gave out 8% wage increases. Meanwhile the seniors and private sector residents and property owners suffer under an increasingly heavy tax weight.
The result is that, quietly, very quietly, more and more residents are leaving the city and moving to rural communities, some as far as 45 minutes away, like Beaver Dam. I know of even city union employees who have moved away. And so, Madison follows the same footsteps as all the big liberal cities – white flight due to crime, increasingly heavy taxes, driving the wealthy and middle class out, businesses moving out, leaving fewer and fewer to share the burden of the ever higher taxes, which in turn leaves a larger base of lower-income residents to carry the ever-increasing tax burden, which in turn forces more to move out. It’s all circular, but they don’t understand that. This is exactly how Detroit and so many other cities have committed city suicide.
And besides, how much more money does the school district need? They already spend a record amount of money and have some of the highest salaries in the nation, and yet, it’s still not enough. High taxes may be justifiable if the student outcomes were successful, but students in the Madison school district have some of the worst test scores and the biggest gap in the nation between black and white test scores.
The worst part about the referendums is that property owners in the city of Madison who reside in other cities are not allowed to vote on the referendums. That’s taxation without representation. The state should change the law to say that property owners should be allowed to vote on referendums that increase taxes on their property. It’s what we fought a revolution for after all.
Hurricane Helene – Komrad Harris said hurricane aid will “hit the ground as soon as possible.” That’s code for never. Let’s see, hmm, it’s been more than a week since the hurricane hit the Carolinas and even longer since the storm first rolled in. She’s known about this for about 9 or 10 days, but in spite of that, she’s done nothing. Oh yeah, she’s offered to give residents $750. Well, blow my socks off. But wait, there’s more – impacted residents have to apply online to get the money. Wow. Since they don’t have homes or computers or maybe even their phones, how exactly are they supposed to apply and secure these funds? Are they going to mail the residents a check to their homes that just floated down the river? And what conditions is she attaching to them? (Maybe you have to choose your pronouns first.)
Until Thursday, I had not heard a single word about FEMA. Where is FEMA? Where are those tens of thousands of RVs FEMA purchased? Where are the FEMA emergency workers – I don’t hear about them handing out emergency food and water. Why aren’t they on the scene? Why weren’t they pre-stationed outside the storm zone ready to go? If they can’t handle this disaster (and all the other ones), let’s just disband them. Shut ‘em down. If Harris and her team can steal $650 million from FEMA and use it or give it to illegal aliens, I guess even the liberals don’t value FEMA. And by the way, that’s misappropriation of funds, which I think is illegal. Billions for foreign nations, nothing for America during times of disasters. I guess we know where the Harris administration stands.
Dockworkers – The dockworkers wanted a 77% pay increase. Their employers had offered a 50% increase. As soon as that got out, Americans lost all faith in the union’s shakedown. So the union was arguing over 27%, but not just 27% but arguing for an already high increase. They’re already paid $39 per hour or about $81,000 per year, so they ain’t exactly underpaid.
Apparently, their employers and the union reached a deal last night for wages to increase to $63 per hour or a 62% increase over 6 years. That’s a 10.33% increase per year. Talk about fueling inflation. Remember, their wages go into the cost of all goods imported through the ports on the East Coast and Gulf Coast, so their wages have a big impact on the price of those goods to consumers. $62 per hour is $129,000 per year, and a few hours of overtime work can add a lot more to that.
And let’s face it, they’re taking advantage of the election – trying to pressure Biden to intervene and order higher wages. On the one hand, I am totally supportive of American jobs, the great job those dockworkers do, and appropriate wages for them, but I, like a lot of Americans, am quickly losing faith in them – due to the threats made by their union leader to shut down the entire U.S. economy. They lost me there.
The bottom line is that all this fighting could have been avoided if the companies would issue profit sharing like we do. That way when times are good, the employees share in the upside, but when times are bad, maybe there’s no upside, but it allows the companies to hold down the sunk costs and survive until better times. All of our key personnel, managers we don’t want to lose, share in the distributions of our success, and I think it’s really the answer to holding onto good people without the burden of overly high wages during recessions. It’s kind of like an automatic adjuster for good and bad economic times.
WEC – I hope that I am not the only one who sees a little irony in the fact that the Wisconsin Election Commission is keeping Kennedy on the ballot here while taking Biden off and putting Harris on. Harris never won a single vote, not one, in any primary. I think if a candidate (Kennedy) doesn’t want to be on the ballot, his name should be removed. And I don’t understand how the WEC, which has 3 Democrats and 3 Republicans on its board, voted to remove Biden and add Harris. The Republicans could have easily blocked that. I continue to be disappointed in two of the Republican members on the commission who keep letting the libs on the commission lead them around by a leash. Grow some balls and stand up to the left.
T. Wall has appeared on Fox News, Jesse Waters Show on Fox, Newsmax, CBS, NBC, Spectrum News 1, USA Today, X.com, YouTube, and numerous Madison and Milwaukee news programs and local newspapers (Wisconsin State Journal, Capital Times, Middleton Review, Middleton Times Tribune, and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and a dozen other Wisconsin papers) and previously wrote a column for InBusiness magazine and the Middleton Times Tribune for five years each. T. Wall holds a degree from the UW in economics and an M.S. in real estate analysis and valuation and his full time career is as a real estate developer. Disclaimer: The opinions of the writer are not necessarily those of this publication or the left!
