In other words, exactly the kind of car you'd expect government to produce. From (of all places) The New York Times:

For starters, G.M.’s vision turned into a car that costs $41,000 before relevant tax breaks ... but after billions of dollars of government loans and grants for the Volt’s development and production. And instead of the sleek coupe of 2007, it looks suspiciously similar to a Toyota Prius. It also requires premium gasoline, seats only four people (the battery runs down the center of the car, preventing a rear bench) and has less head and leg room than the $17,000 Chevrolet Cruze, which is more or less the non-electric version of the Volt.

In short, the Volt appears to be exactly the kind of green-at-all-costs car that some opponents of the bailout feared the government might order G.M. to build. Unfortunately for this theory, G.M. was already committed to the Volt when it entered bankruptcy. And though President Obama’s task force reported in 2009 that the Volt “will likely be too expensive to be commercially successful in the short term,” it didn’t cancel the project. ...

So the future of General Motors (and the $50 billion taxpayer investment in it) now depends on a vehicle that costs $41,000 but offers the performance and interior space of a $15,000 economy car.

Ray LaHood says it can't be stopped. Scott Walker begs to differ: (Via email)

Partying with Jim Doyle and the national president of the pro-abortion Planned Parenthood.

Details here.

The local media continue to give Mayor Barrett a pass on the massive sewer dumps by his sewerage district.

This wasn't always the case:

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (WI)

Barrett calls for overhaul of area sewerage district

If elected mayor, he says he would seek to stop MMSD dumping
 

 
STEVE SCHULTZE sschultze@journalsentinel.com, Journal Sentinel  
Published: January 17, 2004

Milwaukee mayoral candidate Tom Barrett on Friday called for reforms to the sewerage district aimed at eliminating raw sewage dumping, including reconsideration of having a private firm operate the deep tunnel system and treatment plants.

"The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District must clean up its act," Barrett said, citing ongoing concerns about dumping and what he called public loss of confidence in the agency. "I want us to do a better job."

Barrett discussed the plan in an interview and a news conference at his downtown campaign office.

Barrett's overhaul plan includes an independent review of MMSD's 10-year contract with United Water Services, which expires in 2008, and an examination of the overall direction of the agency.

A low-key agency with taxing power and a $325 million annual budget, the district is nominally headed by an 11-member commission. Milwaukee's mayor appoints seven of those members, and former Mayor John O. Norquist held strong sway over MMSD.

Barrett also said he wants to eliminate a lucrative health, dental and life insurance perk for MMSD commissioners, which is worth about $17,400 a year for each. They each also are paid stipends of nearly $11,000.

That total is nearly identical to the average household income in Milwaukee and clearly excessive, Barrett said.

And Barrett called for closer scrutiny by commissioners of all contracts, something he said was necessary in light of a December Journal Sentinel article outlining how one MMSD consultant was paid nearly $250,000 since 1997 for vaguely defined duties.

The consultant, Jeff Gillis, was a former campaign and staff aide to Norquist. Barrett said such MMSD contracts should no longer be used as "soft political landing pads."

Because Gillis' annual contract was less than $100,000, it did not require advance commissioner review, and at least two current commissioners have said they weren't aware of his deal.

Gillis' contract was allowed to expire this month, because "we had obtained the benefit of the services that he had to offer us," said MMSD Commission Chairman Dennis Grzezinksi.

Gillis couldn't be reached Friday.

Barrett's push to reform MMSD appeared aimed at staving off another reform he does not favor -- a fundamental change in the way the district is governed. Some suburban state lawmakers have advocated making the commissioners elected, not appointed.

Barrett said the Milwaukee mayor should retain authority to name seven of the 11 commissioners because a large majority of metro-area residents live or work in Milwaukee. Barrett said, however, that he would replace any current commissioner who does not agree with his MMSD overhaul goals.

Acting Mayor Marvin Pratt, who also is running for mayor, declined to comment on Barrett's MMSD plan. Another leading candidate, Sheriff David Clarke, did not respond to an interview request.

Candidate Vince Bobot has said, if elected, he would replace all MMSD commissioners for voting for a $750,000 increase in this year's operations budget. Bobot also has criticized MMSD for sometimes dumping partially treated sewage.

Barrett said he would like to curtail the practice of "blending" partly treated sewage flows with fully treated flows, something MMSD officials defend as legal and reasonable during heavy rains.

Separating Milwaukee's combined storm and sanitary sewers would help solve MMSD's raw sewage dumping problems, but it would likely be too expensive, Barrett said.

Barrett's detailed sewer plan is one of relatively few firm campaign positions outlined so far by the large field of mayoral candidates. Barrett in November called for giving the mayor power to appoint top Milwaukee Public Schools officials, but he dropped it a month later following harsh criticism. ...

Ladies and gentleman, your new health care system.

Jul 28 2010

High Resolution Version of Chart (PDF) »

Washington, DC – Four months after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously declared “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it,” a congressional panel has released the first chart illustrating the 2,801 page health care law President Obama signed into law in March.

Developed by the Joint Economic Committee minority, led by U.S Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the detailed organization chart displays a bewildering array of new government agencies, regulations and mandates.

“For Americans, as well as Congressional Democrats who didn’t bother to read the bill, this first look at the final health care law confirms what many fear, that reform morphed into a monstrosity of new bureaucracies, mandates, taxes and rationing that will drive up health care costs, hurt seniors and force our most intimate health care choices into the hands of Washington bureaucrats,” said Brady, the committee’s senior House Republican. “If this is what passes for health care reform in America, then God help us all.”

Latest Rasmussen numbers:

The Wisconsin Senate race is still a toss-up, with Republican Ron Johnson and incumbent Democrat Russ Feingold in a near tie.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Wisconsin shows Johnson with 48% support. Feingold, a member of the Senate since 1993, again picks up 46% of the vote. Two percent (2%) favor another candidate in the race, and five percent (5%) are undecided.

Two weeks ago, it was Johnson at 47% and Feingold at 46%. 

This is the fourth survey since May in which the incumbent’s support has remained at 46%. Feingold was reelected in 2004 with 55% of the vote, and incumbents who consistently earn less than 50% of the vote at this stage of a campaign are considered vulnerable.

Pure arrogance and greed. But par for the course for Milwaukee's county board.

A divided Milwaukee County Board Thursday sidetracked a proposal to cut their own pensions and those of other elected county officials by 20%.

Small business... brace yourselves.

Small-business owners face a world of troubles these days: a weak economy, impending health-care mandates, the prospect of higher taxes.
 
But one concern you hear about more and more is a huge new expansion in their IRS reporting requirements — a paperwork nightmare that will commence in 2012.
 
I got an earful on the subject after a recent speech to a group of employers in a small vacation town. They owned shops, a garage, restaurants. They did all their own bookkeeping at nights and on weekends. They did not enjoy it, but they were used to it. But now, they feared their lives were about to be consumed by a new bureaucracy.
 
They have reason to be afraid. Right now, business owners file two forms when they employ people: a W-2 for employees and a 1099 for freelance contractors. A typical small business files 10 such forms, at a cost of 3–5 hours of time per year.
 
Embedded in the new health-care law, however, is a staggering requirement: using a new form — the 1099k — small businesses will have to start reporting all their purchases of goods from other businesses. (You can see a draft version of the 1099K form on the IRS website.)
 
Did you rent a car or stay in a hotel? 1099K.
 
Buy ink and paper from Staples? 1099K.
 
Lease space in a local mall? 1099K.
 
Collect revenue from PayPal, eBay, or Amazon merchants? 1099K.
 
And don’t forget to collect each company’s taxpayer ID number while you are at it!
 
 

Want to see what tough leadership looks like? NJ Governor Chris Christie takes on the teachers union.

NJ Gov. Chris Christie on "Morning Joe": This teacher complaining, they're getting four-to-five percent salary increases a year in a zero percent inflation world; they get free health benefits from the day they're hired--for their entire family--until the day they die. They believe they're entitled to this shelter from the recession when the people who are paying for that shelter are the people who have been laid off, who have lost their homes, had their hours cut back, and all we asked them to do was freeze their salary for one year and pay one-and-a-half percent of their salary for their health benefits. For the average teacher in New Jersey, you're talking about $750 a year for full-family health coverage. Now, I don't think that's a lot to ask, and I don't think we can continue anymore to be having the good people of New Jersey who have been laid off and all the rest--as much as I love teachers--you know, everyone's got to be part of the sacrifice.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: How do you do this in other states? How do you make this politically palatable? And you have a spine, but I've got to tell you, a lot of other politicians don't.

Christie: Well, they better get one because the times demand it. And if what you're going to do is just play the same old game and not speak directly to people and not treat them like adults, then you are bound for failure. Listen, all I'm doing is speaking the truth as I see it, and other people have to make their own judgments.

Sorkin: Are you not worried though about spending in your state in terms of those teachers who are actually going to be taking these cuts, whether they are going to be able to keep spending in the state and what that means for the economy?

Christie: First of all, they're not taking any cuts. I asked them to take cuts, and they said no. So, what cuts are they taking? These teachers are still getting their four or five percent increases. That interplay that you just saw was about me trying to convince people that they need to take a freeze, but, in the end, they didn't. The state teachers union said--they had a rally in Trenton against me. 35,000 people came from the teachers. You know what that rally was? The "me first" rally. "Pay me my raise first. Pay me my free health benefits first. Pay me my pension first. And everybody else in New Jersey, get to the back of the line." Well, you know what? I'm not going to sit by and allow that to go unnoticed, so we'll shine a bright light on it, and we'll see how the people react. But I think we are seeing how the people of New Jersey are reacting, and that's how you make it politically palatable in other states in the country. Just shine a bright light on greed and self-interest."

You can't make this stuff up. Via Milwaukee Buzz.

Some Milwaukee Public Schools teachers could be getting their hotel accommodations or other Spring Break vacation expenses paid by the district under an agreement reached with the teachers union...

From the CRG folks. 

When we started the "Wisconsin Waste Watchers" blog this wasn't necessarily the kind of waste we anticipated.  However, we now understand why Barrett wants to charge so much for water!

From the City that brought you cryptosporidium . . .

 

two-Billion gallons of Barrett's Secret Sewage Sauce added to Lake Michigan.

We can't say we weren't warned.

The risk of a debt crisis along the lines of the kind being experienced in Europe will increase as long as the debt increases, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said Tuesday. 

The CBO said in a new report that while it was impossible to predict whether the United States would encounter a debt crisis like those plaguing some European nations, the longer debts and deficits go unaddressed, the greater the risk of a crisis.

“Unfortunately, there is no way to predict with any confidence whether and when such a crisis might occur in the United States; in particular, there is no identifiable tipping point of debt relative to GDP indicating that a crisis is likely or imminent.” a new CBO report said. “But all else being equal, the higher the debt, the greater the risk of such a crisis.”

The CBO’s warning comes less than 100 days before congressional elections in which the growing debt and deficits are a larger consideration for voters. A number of Republican lawmakers and candidates for office have warned of a second financial crisis spurred by debt, likening the situation in the U.S. to the situation facing Greece.

The One's top economic advisor warns against tax increases. He won't listen, says Rich Lowry.

White House economic adviser Christina Romer is off-message. Her offense is nearly as grave as that of White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, who let slip that Democrats are in danger of losing the House. Romer’s indiscretion was made in an academic paper arguing that tax increases kill growth . . . just as the White House prepares to increase taxes.

Published with her husband in the June issue of The American Economic Review, Romer’s paper is complicated and nuanced, befitting the work of a serious academic economist. It surveys tax changes during the past few decades in widely varying circumstances. But here’s a crude, two-sentence takeaway: “Our estimates suggest that a tax increase of 1 percent of GDP reduces output over the next three years by nearly 3 percent. The effect is highly significant.”

If her paper spreads as quickly through the Obama administration as, say, the Rolling Stone article with former Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s disparaging remarks about Joe Biden, it might do some good. But it surely will go the way of Romer’s other work with pointed contemporary relevance. In a 1994 paper, she concluded that monetary policy is generally more effective as economic stimulus than fiscal policy. The Obama administration nonetheless embraced a $1 trillion fiscal stimulus that — predictably — fell flat.
 

...Wisconsin loses, again. Via MacIver.

Madison Wisc..] Wisconsin’s failure in the Educational Race to the Top is tied to policy makers’ reluctance to buck the will of the powerful Wisconsin teachers’ union.

Christian D’Andrea, an educational policy analyst with the John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy in Madison, says the state doomed its application when it failed create a strong tie between teacher compensation and student performance, a position long-opposed by the Wisconsin Education Association Council....

D’Andrea said the staggering achievement gap between student groups was also likely a key player in this year’s failure, as the lack of educational progress between students was no doubt a troubling figure for the application’s reviewers.

“The bottom line is other states are pursuing a vigorous reform agenda that includes tying teacher compensation and discipline to student performance and Wisconsin policy makers would not be that bold,” said D’Andrea. “WEAC successfully fought off attempts at more sweeping reforms aimed at increasing teacher accountability, and Wisconsin lost out on these one-time funds.”

Yet another reason to be skeptical of our half-fast train. From the Economist:

UNION STATION in Los Angeles has been restored as a fine example of the Art Deco architecture that typified California in the 1930s. It has served as a backdrop for many Hollywood films, from “Union Station” (naturally) to “Blade Runner” and “Star Trek: First Contact”. It was the last grand station to be built before America’s passenger railways went into what you might call terminal decline.

Today it is a hub for Metrolink commuter trains and Amtrak services to faraway cities such as Chicago and Seattle. These trains have to pull in and then back out in a clumsy manoeuvre. But there are plans for through tracks in time to carry the high-speed services that California is desperate to have by 2020 under an ambitious $42 billion plan to connect San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento.

California’s plans were given a boost by Barack Obama’s stimulus package last year. This earmarks a lump sum of $8 billion, plus $1 billion a year, to help construct fast rail corridors around America (see map). Such lines are common in Europe, Japan and, increasingly, China, yet the only thing at all like them in America is Amtrak’s Acela service from Boston via New York to Washington, DC. It rarely reaches its top speed of 150mph (240kph) and for much of the way manages little more than half that, because the track is not equipped for higher speeds. Acela, like virtually all trains run by publicly owned Amtrak, has to use tracks belonging to freight railways, whose trains trundle along at 50mph; passenger trains must stick below 80mph. Despite the excitement of railway buffs and the enthusiasm of environmentalists, high-speed rail in America is likely to mean a few more diesel-electric intercity trains at 110mph, not swish electric expresses going nearly twice as fast.

But the problem with America’s plans for high-speed rail is not their modesty. It is that even this limited ambition risks messing up the successful freight railways. Their owners worry that the plans will demand expensive train-control technology that freight traffic could do without. They fear a reduction in the capacity available to freight. Most of all they fret that the spending of federal money on upgrading their tracks will lead the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), the industry watchdog, to impose tough conditions on them and, in effect, to reintroduce regulation of their operations. Attempts at re-regulation have been made in Congress in recent years, in response to rising freight rates. “The freight railroads feel they are under attack,” says Don Phillips, a rail expert in Virginia.

Via Newsbusters.

Catching up a bit here... The Heritage Foundation on the Administration's stunning admission of economic and fiscal failure.

It is established practice in Washington that if you have to release bad news, it is best to do it on a Friday … the later in the day the better. So not only did the White House schedule the publication of the “Mid-Session Budget Review” for last Friday, but they then released it three hours late to ensure that as few reporters as possible were left in the nation’s capital to cover it. But Heritage’s dedicated budget team patiently waited the Obama administration out, and their analysis shows that this year’s mid-session review is nothing short of a complete admission of failure of the White House’s economic policies.

When President Obama sold his $862 billion economic stimulus to the American people, he promised that, if enacted, it would prevent unemployment from ever rising above 8%. With unemployment currently at 9.5%, the American people are now well aware that the President’s stimulus has been a complete failure. But Friday’s report was the first time this Administration was forced to admit just how long Americans will have to suffer for their failed economic policies. According to Friday’s report, the Obama administration now projects that unemployment will average 9% throughout all of next year and 8.1% throughout 2012.

And if that news wasn’t bad enough, the report pegs this year’s budget deficit at $1.471 trillion, or 10% of the entire U.S. economy. In nominal dollars, it’s the largest deficit in American history; and as a percentage of the economy, it’s the largest deficit since World War II. To pay for that $1.471 trillion hole, our government will borrow 41 cents of every dollar it spends. And the Obama Administration concedes that these large deficits are here to stay. It projects another $1.42 trillion deficit in 2011, which is $150 billion worse than previously predicted. Looking ahead, the President’s budget includes deficits that never fall below $698 billion and leaves our children with $18.5 trillion in debt by 2020. And all this assumes the economy will grow 4% from 2012-2014. The only times the economy performed that well in the past thirty years was from 1997-2000 and from 1983-1985.

Roger Kimball gives credit where credit is due:

Thanks a lot, Mr. President.  And thanks to you, too, Secretary Geithner. You inherited the richest, most productive country in history. And you have set it firmly on course for economic stagnation.

It’s all part of your effort to “fundamentally transform the Untied States of America,” isn’t it, Mr. President? That’s what you promised in October 2008: to change America fundamentally. Who would have predicted you were really serious? (Well, some of us did, but you know what I mean.)

You’ve made it clear that, deep down, you really don’t like the United States. In that, you are like many of your Ivy confrères, all those Harvard-Yale-Princeton types who find the spectacle of individual freedom playing itself out irredeemably vulgar. You all are beyond allegiance to anything so parochial as an individual nation. And when it comes to what (even now) is the world’s nation of nations, the United States, you are more than embarrassed: you are downright impatient...

Charles Krauthammer:

Barack Obama's considerable political capital, earned on Election Day 2008, is spent. Well spent, mind you, on the enactment of a highly ideological agenda of Obamacare, financial reform and a near-trillion-dollar stimulus that will significantly transform the country. But spent nonetheless. There's nothing left with which to complete his social-democratic ambitions. This would have to await the renewed mandate that would come with a second inaugural.

**

Will Russ Feingold pledge not to push through legislation in a lame duck session? Here's what he wrote in 2006.

Wisconsin in the national spotlight. CQ:

The anti-Democratic mood of the electorate may finally be catching up to Sen. Russ Feingold , the three-term Wisconsin Democrat who’s made a career of positioning himself as something of a political outsider. He was, for instance, the lone Democrat in the Senate to vote against the new financial regulation legislation.

A string of summer polls have charted a trend in which Feingold has been unable to break free of the margin of error, keeping him tied or slightly trailing Oshkosh plastics executive Ron Johnson, the favored Republican. As a result, CQ Politics is moving the rating of this race from Likely Democratic to the more competitive Leans Democratic category.

Earlier this year, Feingold was thought to be in safe territory when former Gov. Tommy Thompson (R) decided against a run. In a state where President Barack Obama trounced Republican presidential nominee John McCain in 2008, the landscape seemed to favor Feingold and indeed he remains a formidable incumbent.

Good piece from Reason magazine, that includes the fight over virtual schools in Wisconsin.

In the zero-sum world of education dollars, that approach means that state education bureaucrats generally don’t show up at K12’s virtual door with welcoming tater tot casseroles. In 2003 Wisconsin’s Northern Ozaukee School District was experiencing declining enrollment and hoped that bringing in a virtual charter might attract students (and their per-pupil spending allocations) from around the state. This worked brilliantly, with 500 students signing up for the virtual charter school from all over the state in the program’s first year. The district and K12 split the $5,000 that came with each kid, and everyone was happy. Well, everyone except the administrators and teachers in the districts losing enrollment dollars to the experiment in online learning. The conflict exploded in January 2004 with a lawsuit brought by the teachers union and the elected state superintendent. State Sen. John Lehman (D-Racine), who heads his chamber’s education committee, accused private education companies of “profiteering off of kids.”

The result was a compromise that neutered virtual education in Wisconsin. K12 could continue to operate, but it could enroll students only from the physical district where the charter school was located—essentially stopping the Internet at the county line. And enrollment was capped at 5,250 students. For good measure, Wisconsin announced plans to create an FLVS-like state-sponsored virtual academy, which will compete with K12 on lopsided terms and, unlike in Florida, be firmly under the control of the education bureaucracy...

Nice job Nancy and Harry.

Why is the economy so sluggish? Why are employers so reluctant to create new jobs? Why are investors frozen? Could it have something to do with this?

 Through the end of this year, the federal estate tax rate is zero — thanks to the package of broad-based tax cuts that President Bush pushed through to get the economy going earlier in the decade.

But as of midnight Dec. 31, the death tax returns — at a rate of 55% on estates of $1 million or more. The effect this will have on hospital life-support systems is already a matter of conjecture.

Resurrection of the death tax, however, isn't the only tax problem that will be ushered in Jan. 1. Many other cuts from the Bush administration are set to disappear and a new set of taxes will materialize. And it's not just the rich who will pay.

The lowest bracket for the personal income tax, for instance, moves up 50% — to 15% from 10%. The next lowest bracket — 25% — will rise to 28%, and the old 28% bracket will be 31%. At the higher end, the 33% bracket is pushed to 36% and the 35% bracket becomes 39.6%.

But the damage doesn't stop there.

The marriage penalty also makes a comeback, and the capital gains tax will jump 33% — to 20% from 15%. The tax on dividends will go all the way from 15% to 39.6% — a 164% increase.

Both the cap-gains and dividend taxes will go up further in 2013 as the health care reform adds a 3.8% Medicare levy for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and joint filers making more than $250,000. Other tax hikes include: halving the child tax credit to $500 from $1,000 and fixing the standard deduction for couples at the same level as it is for single filers.

Letting the Bush cuts expire will cost taxpayers $115 billion next year alone, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and $2.6 trillion through 2020.

But even more tax headaches lie ahead. ...

How's that summer of recovery coming, Joe?

The housing market, whose collapse pulled the economy into recession in late 2007, is stalling again.

In major markets across the country, home sales are deteriorating, inventories of unsold homes are piling up and builders are scaling back construction plans. The expiration of a federal home-buyers tax credit at the end of April is weighing on the market.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Census Bureau said single-family housing starts in June fell by 0.7%, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 454,000. The U.S. started 1.47 million homes in 2006, before the housing bubble popped.

Future construction looks even weaker. Permits for single-family starts fell 3% in June, following big declines in both May and April. "We're hovering at post-World War II lows," said Ivy Zelman, president of Zelman & Associates, a research firm.

How despicable was the gambit? It was too sleazy for lee Holloway, who issued a statement asking supervisors to hold their comments until more information is in....

MILWAUKEE – County Executive Scott Walker issued the following statement regarding the four supervisors participating with a politically active union at a thinly veiled “memorial” news conference later today:

"It is despicable that anyone would use this tragedy for political purposes.

Leadership of the County Board had been briefed on several occasions with updates on O'Donnell Park and on the facade inspections on other county structures.  All other information related to the issue remains under investigation by the District Attorney and Office of the Sheriff.

The inspection process for all county structures was announced by the County Board Chairman and myself and was accelerated to insure public safety.  It was done with Milwaukee County-based Graef-USA, and the company contracted with ten local firms to assist in the inspections of more than 100 structures.  A full report of the process was given to the leadership of the County Board.  

It is unfortunate that an extreme minority of County Board members chooses to ignore updates from their own leadership and staff.  If they were serious about getting more information, they would wait until the full County Board meets on this matter.  The only reason for their press conference is to try and score cheap political points because their attacks are far removed from the truth."

From 2002 through this year, the county budgeted $730 million in the budget for maintenance, repair and renovation costs for county structures.  A June 25, 2010 memo from Parks Director Sue Black shows that all currently critical, potentially critical, or necessary but not yet critical work identified at the parking structure at O'Donnell Park was completed prior to June 24, 2010 and that the work identified was not related to the façade of the structure.

A detailed inspection of the parking structure was started on June 25, 2010 by an external structural engineering firm that is currently reviewing the installation of the remaining façade panels.