About That 26 Million....

The Foreclosure Settlement reached last week by 5 major banks and 49 States looks to be a decent deal for a lot of people affected by some pretty shoddy work by the banks, and a good deal for the banks since it limits liability they'd face from individual states.

There is of course, some political points to be scored from it also. In Wisconsin Democrats immediately jumped on Gov. Scott Walker for the fact that $26 million of the State's cut of the pie is going to go to cover a budget shortfall.

Newpapers jumped on it as a flip-flop, after he'd criticized a previous governor for wasting the tobacco settlement funds by putting them into the general budget to shore up a (much bigger) deficit.

Being of a generally rational mind, I though that was probably a bad idea, but also understanding partisanship, I decided to look up the terms of the settlement, and see how he could get away with such a dastardly deed.

As it turns out, it only took 1 search with Google to find out he was actually putting the money where the settlement said it should go. ZeroHedge has a nice little breakdown of how the settlement money is divided.

Specifically, from Zero Hedge:

$3.5bn will go to state and federal governments to repay public funds lost as a result of servicer misconduct and to fund housing counselors, legal aid and other similar public programs.

Wisconsin's share of that 3.5 billion is 31.5 million. Of that $5.5 million is going into various programs across the state, the other $26 million is going to the general fund, to "repay public funds". What a concept, actually using the money where the settlement said it should go.

I understand Wisconsin Democrat's problem with this; they spent years raiding transportation, retirement and patient settlement funds to play 3 card monte with the budget and make it look good. The idea of actually putting money where it is designated to go is somewhat of a foriegn concept to them.

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Could Walker Recall Be in Doubt?

A funny thing could happen on the way to getting a recall of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, it might not be a "sure thing" like we've been told.

Since the Union Activists grass roots organizers marched to the Government Accountability Board (GAB) with their "1,000,000" signatures the media and the left (I know, redundant) have claimed that the election in inevitable. Except no one seemed to count the signatures, hell the GAB claims it's not their job.

Well, a few grass roots groups on the other side have been counting, and their math, along with some basic work from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel makes me wonder if we'll even see a recall election in Wisconsin.

A number of people, from different groups doing independent verifications of the petitions have come up with an average number of signatures per page of 4.9; sounds like a lot with over 152,000 pages submitted; but doing the math shows that instead of a million signatures, that only comes out to 750,000.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel did a randomly generated check on 500 signatures, and found with what was no more than a cursory look that about 15% of them were obvious fakes. The didn't look for duplicates or verify address or names, or go through the Verify The Recall database for folks who didn't want to be on it. Just using their number, and the verifiers rate of signatures, you are already down to 635,000 signatures.

If 750,000 is closer to the true number submitted, that means that Walker would have to eliminate 28% of the submitted signatures to have the recall effort fall short of the 541,000 they need to get it through.

How do 28% get eliminated? What's leaking out so far from the groups verifying the signatures are tales of large numbers of errors that fall out of the "clerical error" category that can be corrected. For instance, dates on signatures that fell after the document was signed as complete. Dates on the top signature lines that were done after the bottom line. Every document by Lena Taylor being wrong, with the wrong address and district listed on them.

So if the Journal comes up with 15% failing common sense checks, and reviewers find 10% of the pages are flawed due to items as above, you now only need 3% to end up with less than the necessary number. Considering news stories of people signing 80 times, or people who've signed up on Verify the Recall who shouldn't be on the list being there, 3% won't be hard to come up with.

The thought of exploding unionista heads if the GAB is forced to say that there aren't enough valid signatures makes for some sweet dreams.

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The Union's Real Problem

Anyone watching the news in the last few days has seen the sleep ins, protests, and general unrest in Madison, Wisconsin.

The cause of the consternation is the "budget fix bill" proposed by the Governor, Scott Walker, that would require union members to pay 5.8% towards their retirement, and 12% (up from 6) of the cost of their health care premiums.

It would also restrict collective bargaining to wage packages only, other currently bargained items would fall under the same state laws (some of the most restrictive in the country) that non-represented employees are covered under.

If you spend a little time reading the articles, and especially the comments, in places like the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel you'll see many union members commenting that they'd be happy to bargain for those concessions, but not have them rammed down their throats.

I believe them, I think a good chunk would agree that they right now have a sweet deal that they can't justify to their friends in the private sector. At the same time, they don't want to lose their collective bargaining leverage on other issues, which I can't blame them for.

The problem is, it's not the rank and file pushing the issues, it's the union leadership, and frankly, they'd cave on the whole thing except for one small provision in the bill. That provision makes Wisconsin essentially a right to work state. It forbids the deduction of union dues from paychecks, and requires annual certification votes by members.

Once people start writing checks for due, it becomes personal. They start wondering what exactly they are getting for the money. When it happens unions generally fold, because workers doing their own cost-benefit analysis figure out they aren't getting much for that check.

They also don't like this because for years they failed to unionize many public employees. During the eight years of Jim Doyle's administration a number of laws were passed that took that choice from the workers, and put them in unions without a vote by anyone but a Democratic controlled state legislature.

How did they manage that? It was actually easy, just find a group of non-represented workers who work in an area with a union presence; the University system's admin and some support staff for example; and reclassify their positions into a group that's already represented. Voila! You suddenly have thousands of new dues paying members without needing a vote by the affected people.

So when you listen to the news reports about AWOL legislators, protesting teachers, and sick-outs, keep in mind that the rank and file union members probably aren't the biggest obstacle in Madison, the union leadership and their reduced funding is.

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Liberal Definition of "Tax Relief"

If you have an understanding of economics, and government, and need a laugh, read this editorial from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called "Yes, it is property tax relief ".

In it, the editorial board of the newpaper explains that a 0.5% sales tax enacted 17 years ago was in fact, property tax relief. By their logic, since the money raised was spent, and didn't come from property taxes, it was "property tax relief". The flip side of the argument; if they hadn't collected the money, it wouldn't have been spent; isn't raised. The editorial board at that paper has issues with the idea of not taking and spending money.

The source of the argument is an advisory referendum slated for November to ask the voters to raise the sales tax again, so that property taxes won't have to go up to fund transportation and parks.

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, who's vetoed just about every tax hike is against it, looking instead for spending cuts, including jobs, to keep both systems running. Walker is a conservative who took office after the board was caught in a pension scandal a while back. He keeps getting reelected because he keeps swimming upstream against a liberal board, and it's media backers to keep taxes low. He looks for efficiency, not another money grab.

Now, as far as the actual subjects of the tax, transit and parks, there is of course another solution to their funding issues, charge the people who use them more money. Add a quarter to bus fares, add a buck to the charges for park usage, like golf, swimming etc. The arguement against this is that having low cost parks and transit attracts people to a city.

While this is somewhat true having high taxes drives them away just as fast. The county already has high property taxes, and a higher than average sales tax because of it's 0.5% addition from 1991, plus another sales tax add-on that's paying for Miller Park. Oh yeah, and it's losing population.

Good luck to Walker and his allies in defeating this come November. Maybe a ballot box ass kicking will wake the rest of the Milwaukee County Board up to the fact that the residents there are sick of being taxed.

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