End of January Links

More interesting stories from the previous week or so:

The Fight Over the Future of Football Has Become a Battle for California’s Soul - The Ringer

20 old Cleveland Rams photos to remind you L.A.'s Super Bowl-bound franchise began here - The Plain Dealer

Brianna Decker Will Get Her Prize Money After All, Just Not From The NHL [Update] - Deadspin

James Harden’s Transcendent Step-Back - The New Yorker 

Colorado a hotbed for North American yak ranching – Denver Post 

The 500-Year-Long Science Experiment - The Atlantic 

Particle physics may have reached the end of the line - Backreaction 

No One Is Prepared for Hagfish Slime - The Atlantic  

“Venture capital money kills more businesses than it helps,” says Basecamp CEO Jason Fried - Recode

How a retired couple found lottery odds in their favor - 60 Minutes.  Also featured here.

Chicago billionaire Ken Griffin just bought the most expensive U.S. home ever: A $238 million New York penthouse - Chicago Tribune and Daniel Snyder’s new $100 million purchase is the first superyacht with a certified Imax movie theater - Washington Post.  I don't think a higher top tax bracket would hurt anything.  It beats the guillotine.

Advances in weather prediction - Science.  "But, as the American Meteorological Society celebrates its 100th anniversary, the improvement in forecasting stands out. Modern 72-hour predictions of hurricane tracks are more accurate than 24-hour forecasts were 40 years ago (see the figure), giving sufficient time for evacuations and other preparations that save lives and property." It amazes me how accurate rainfall forecasts can be, with the timing of the beginning of the storm down to the hour.

More March Links

A few stories that caught my eye over the weekend and the first day of work this week:

For Cincinnati Reds star Joey Votto, spring is about the process, not the batting average - Cincinnati Enquirer

To Save Whales, Maine's Iconic Lobster Industry May Have To Change - The Salt

How Syngenta won the war over weedkillers - Politico

China needs more water. So it's building a rain-making network three times the size of Spain – South China Morning Post.  You have to click through just for the pictures, and the description of the "rocket technology" in use.  Looks crazier than hell to me.

Elon Musk Is the Henry Ford of His Age. That's Bad. – Bloomberg

Rural hospital shutdowns force communities to take care of their own – CNBC

Can the Most Hated Man in West Virginia Win? – Politico.  This dude is too ridiculous to be a cartoon villain.  Why do Republican voters flock to the biggest pieces of shit and believe every ridiculous lie they tell?

The Battle For Paradise – The Intercept.  Rich assholes versus Puerto Ricans.

Land of the Lawless - Lapham's Quarterly

In California's rural, conservative north, there are big dreams for cleaving the state – LA Times.  If rural voters are for it, it is probably a very bad idea.

How Trump's Protectionism Could Backfire - New York Times.  Great maps.

Retirees Reshape Where Americans Live – Wall Street Journal.  I don't really care about the retiree angle.  I just wanted to show the map of where rural areas are declining in population.  Downstate Illinois looks awful.

Chart of the Day: Sources of Wealth

If you want a good illustration of why business tax cuts overwhelmingly favor the extremely wealthy, this chart from Visual Capitalist does the job:

The Financialized Economy

Via Downtown Josh Brown:

Then Steve King says something racist.

State Parks in Scott Walker's Wisconsin

Wall Street Journal:

Wisconsin’s cash-strapped state parks are considering selling naming rights or sponsorships at some facilities, raising concerns pristine natural landscapes may soon be dotted with corporate logos.
​Wisconsin’s is one of a number of state-park systems looking for new ways to pay for their operations as their lawmakers cut public funding....
In Wisconsin, lawmakers in 2015 eliminated all state tax support for the Department of Natural Resources, which oversees its state parks. That led to a $1.4 million deficit and forced the department to come up with new ways to earn revenue.
In December, it submitted a number of proposals to state lawmakers, including raising campsite fees. It also proposed what it called a “limited path” for “sponsorships and advertising.” Some think that could mean selling naming rights for parks or park facilities, a move critics say is something more akin to what sports stadiums would do to raise money....
This November, voters in Alabama overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment that will block the state legislature from diverting funds from the state parks department. The legislature had redirected around $15 million from the department since 2010, leading to the closing of five Alabama state parks in 2015.
“We don’t get that money back, but we don’t have the threat of seeing our money taken from us in the future,” said Gregory M. Lein, the director of Alabama State Parks at the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
Despite that victory, Mr. Lein says budgets remain tight, and he is “open-minded” about working with private companies. One of the state parks that closed in 2015 has reopened under the control of a private company.

 Back in 1995, when I visited a couple of state parks in Wisconsin, they already had a $10 a day parking fee in the parks, along with camping fees and I believe entrance fees.  Good to know that in an effort to give Herb Kohl and the Menard assholes tax cuts, state legislators have decided to not spend any tax dollars in the parks.  Give Republicans another 20 years and they'll be selling the parks to rich folks.  By the way, that privatized state park in Alabama was located in the Black Belt.  I'd have never guessed.  That civil society was nice back when we had it. 

Why Are Voters Mad?

This:

Because the pre-tax incomes of the bottom 50 percent stagnated while average national income per adult grew, the share of national income earned by the bottom 50 percent collapsed from 20 percent in 1980 to 12.5 percent in 2014. Over the same period, the share of incomes going to the top 1 percent surged from 10.7 percent in 1980 to 20.2 percent in 2014.⁷ As shown in Figure 2, these two income groups basically switched their income shares, with about 8 points of national income transferred from the bottom 50 percent to the top 1 percent. The gains made by the 1 percent would be large enough to fully compensate for the loss of the bottom 50 percent, a group 50 times larger.

To understand how unequal the United States is today, consider the following fact. In 1980, adults in the top 1 percent earned on average 27 times more than bottom 50 percent of adults. Today they earn 81 times more. This ratio of 1 to 81 is similar to the gap between the average income in the United States and the average income in the world’s poorest countries, among them the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, and Burundi. Another alarming trend evident in this data is that the increase in income concentration at the top in the United States over the past 15 years is due to a boom in capital income. It looks like the working rich who drove the upsurge in income concentration in the 1980s and 1990s are either retiring to live off their capital income or passing their fortunes onto heirs.

Trump's policies are just going to worsen these trends.  He can jawbone companies into keeping some decent paying jobs in the States, but overall, there is downward pressure on the middle class, and messing with Medicare and cutting taxes for rich people aren't going to change that.  Even decent paying public sector jobs are getting squeezed out, and the Republicans elected with Trump are all for strangling them further:

Back in 2009, Rick Erickson was happy with his job as a teacher in one of the state’s northernmost school districts on the shores of Lake Superior. He made $35,770 a year teaching chemistry and physics, which wasn’t a lot of money, but then again, he received stellar healthcare and pension benefits, and could talk honestly with administrators about what he needed as a teacher every two years when his union sat down with the school district in collective bargaining sessions.

Then, five years ago, Wisconsin passed Act 10, also known as the Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill, which dramatically limited the ability of teachers and other public employees to bargain with employers on wages, benefits, and working conditions. After Act 10, Erickson saw his take-home pay drop dramatically: He now makes $30,650. His wife is a teacher, too, and together they make 11 percent less than they did before Act 10. The local union he once led no longer exists, and so he can’t bargain with the school district for things like prep time and sick days. He pays more for health care and his pension, and he says both he and his wife may now not be able to retire until they are much older than they had planned....Data suggests that Erickson is by no means unique. Total teacher compensation in Wisconsin has dropped 8 percent, or $6,500 since Act 10, according to an extensive study by Andrew Litten, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan who used state data showing compensation of all teachers in the state of Wisconsin. What’s more, he found that the most experienced and highest-paid teachers experienced the biggest reduction in benefits.

This will continue, and voters will continue to be mad.  Trump won't solve anything.

End of November Mini-Links

It's been a while, but I'll try to link to a few of the good stories I've seen recently:

Trump's Infrastructure Plan Could Be A Giant Sports Welfare Giveaway - VICE Sports.  Or pipeline giveaway, or outdoor mall giveaway.  I doubt we'll see many century-old water mains replaced.

Choke Point of a Nation: The High Cost of an Aging River Lock - New York Times.  More on the Olmstead Lock and Dam project here and here and here.

A Blade Strikes Steel, and the Blast Shocks a Nation's Energy System - Bloomberg

The Road Ahead - American Scientist

The Desert Rock That Feeds The World - The Atlantic 

Farmers Are Courting Trump, But They Don't Speak For All Of Rural America - The Salt.  Shorter farmers: where's my Obamaphone free shit.

How Drug-Resistant Bacteria Travel From the Farm to Your Table - Scientific American


Trump's Economic Plan: This Isn't Going To Work - Counterpunch

Behind "Make America Great," the Koch Agenda Returns with a Vengeance - Talking Points Memo.  Government of the billionaires, by the billionaires and for the billionaires, as Trump's cabinet attests.

Democrats Don't Have an Easy Answer for the Rust Belt - The Atlantic

Carrier Reaches Deal With Trump to Keep About 1,000 U.S. Jobs - Bloomberg.  I can't wait to hear the details about how much this will cost.  What's to keep lots of other companies from threatening to move jobs to Mexico to get their free money, too?  How about Rexnord?

In Short Strike, Jim Beam Workers Crush Two-Tier and Beat Grueling Hours - Labor Notes

Disgorge the Cash - The New Inquiry.  "Maximizing shareholder return" has done more damage to American workers than anything else.

A philosopher’s 350-year-old trick to get people to change their minds is now backed up by psychologists - Quartz

The 2016 election pitted booming cities against stagnant rural areas - Vox

Chattanooga Bus Crash and Privatization

When I heard about the bus crash in Chattanooga, my first thought was to wonder if school busing there had been privatized, like they have in several school districts in this area.  All I had heard about the accident had mainly been racist or borderline racist comments from neighbors about the bus driver and how it was rumored he had asked the kids if they were ready to die.  I finally did read a story, though, and lo and behold:

The Hamilton County Board of Education confirmed in a statement Wednesday that it had received complaints recently about Walker "and the way he operated his bus."
It said the complaints were forwarded to Durham School Services, the private company that is contracted to provide bus services for the school system, for whom Walker worked.
Hart, of the NTSB, said Durham was operating under a "conditional" federal safety rating, meaning some unspecified problems had been uncovered in the past, but that they had been resolved satisfactorily, in August 2015.
He said investigators were going back over Durham's oversight and crash history.

While politicians and citizens love to complain about overpaid government workers and their lavish benefit packages, it should be patently obvious that the only way privatization can allow the private company to make a profit and save the government entity money is by paying the employees as little as possible.  This leads to high turnover, lack of commitment by employees, high error rates and other problems, many of which are seen in other low wage areas of employment.  Privatization also creates another layer of interference between the public and the oversight of the operating company and troublesome employees.  As the article says, the Board of Education forwarded the complaints to the private company, but mentions nothing about any actions taken by the company.

President-elect Trump announced his choice for Secretary of Education, and she is Betsy DeVos:

DeVos has been a vocal supporter of school choice, which is something Trump backed on the campaign trail. DeVos, who heads up the pro-charter and pro-school-voucher nonprofit American Federation for Children, has said parents should have the ability to choose the best schools for their children, whether they are traditional public schools, charters, or private schools. Trump has proposed creating a $20 billion federal voucher program for families to use to send their kids to the school of their choice.....According to Chalkbeat, DeVos’s family poured $1.45 million into an effort to prevent Michigan from adding oversight for charter schools. That effort ultimately failed. DeVos and her husband have been supporters of charter schools for decades and longtime opponents of regulation. And according to Chalkbeat, around 80 percent of the state’s charter schools are run by private companies. The lack of oversight has prompted concern from the Obama administration that some bad charters were being allowed to operate without improving or being forced to close.... DeVos, 58, is married to Dick DeVos, who ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the governorship in Michigan. He is the former president of Amway, which his father co-founded, and of the Orlando Magic NBA team. Her brother, Erik Prince, founded Blackwater, the controversial security firm.

I expect Trump and Republicans will rush to privatize as many government services as they can.  This will be bad for the general public, but good for wealthy investors, who will be allowed to loot the treasury and provide poor services for traditionally public-run operations, such as schools, prisons and infrastructure.  Trump has already made private investment the keystone of his much-anticipated infrastructure plan.  They may even expand into new areas, such as regulatory oversight and law enforcement.  Notice that DeVos's brother founded Blackwater, the malignant contractor providing mercenary services to the federal government in Iraq. As the need for reform of police services becomes more acute, expect some to push for privatization.

When turning over public money to private companies to provide public services, the services become profit centers, quality and oversight go down, and good jobs disappear as the positions are turned into unattractive, low-wage jobs.  Back in my day, bus drivers worked seemingly forever, with very little turnover.  These jobs were often filled by farmers and the wives of farmers, who got much-needed steady income and health insurance for part-time jobs.  Unfortunately, as health insurance costs have skyrocketed (not just because of Obamacare, you right-wing jackasses out there) and resistance to taxes has increased, such jobs have started to be privatized.  With privatization, employees no longer stick around for years, and never get to know the families they are serving.  The supposed savings from privatization never really materialize.  However, workers have crappier jobs for crappier pay, wealthy investors get even more wealthy.  We need to push back against privatization and the crapification of employment and government services at this time when more and more pressure will be coming to contract the services out.

The Case For More Government

NYT:

Last month, four academics — Jeff Madrick from the Century Foundation, Jon Bakija of Williams College, Lane Kenworthy of the University of California, San Diego, and Peter Lindert of the University of California, Davis — published a manual of sorts. It is titled “How Big Should Our Government Be?” (University of California Press).

“A national instinct that small government is always better than large government is grounded not in facts but rather in ideology and politics,” they write. The evidence throughout the history of modern capitalism “shows that more government can lead to greater security, enhanced opportunity and a fairer sharing of national wealth.”

The scholars laid out four important tasks: improving the economy’s productivity, bolstering workers’ economic security, investing in education to close the opportunity deficit of low-income families, and ensuring that Middle America reaps a larger share of the spoils of growth.

Their strategy includes more investment in the nation’s buckling infrastructure and expanding unemployment and health insurance. It calls for paid sick leave, parental leave and wage insurance for workers who suffer a pay cut when changing jobs. And they argue for more resources for poor families with children and for universal early childhood education.

This agenda won’t come cheap. They propose raising government spending by 10 percentage points of the nation’s gross domestic product ($1.8 trillion in today’s dollars), to bring it to some 48 percent of G.D.P. by 2065.

That might sound like a lot of money. But it is roughly where Germany, Norway and Britain are today. And it is well below government spending in countries like France, Sweden and Denmark.

To me, this seems like common sense.  But I've yet to be able to convince any of my neighbors that that is the case.  I think the article hits on an important note: that people are fine with programs that benefit them, but they are sure the "lazy blacks" or whoever are unfairly benefiting from their tax dollars.

Personally, I think the biggest job creation plan of all would be a national healthcare plan that took the burden of the provision of health insurance from employers and put the government in charge of cost-control.  For-profit health insurance makes zero sense whatsoever, and higher income tax rates on the truly wealthy might convince doctors they don't need so much income to keep up with the hedge fund assholes and overpaid attorneys (not to say anything about entertainers, athletes and untalented reality stars like Donald Trump and Paris Hilton).

Sure, a lot of unique ingredients contributed to the egalitarianism and shared prosperity (amongst white folks) of the post-war years, but I feel confident that a progressive income tax and government investment and transfers contributed significantly.  I don't think it is a coincidence that income inequality increased as top marginal tax rates and government programs for the poor decreased.  But, hey, what do I know?  I'm just a stupid farmer (who gets plenty of help from the government, in spite of being pretty well off.)

Some People Just Have Too Much Money

Three professional sports teams AND an 800 square mile ranch?  Yes:

Stan Kroenke, the billionaire owner of the NFL’s Rams, has agreed to purchase the historic W.T. Waggoner Estate Ranch in Texas, representatives of the ranch said on Tuesday. Terms for the purchase of the more than 520,000-acre estate were not disclosed. The ranch had been listed with an asking price of $725 million.
District Judge Dan Mike Bird in Vernon, Texas, allowed the family owners of the Waggoner Ranch to proceed in a private transaction with Kroenke, one of the wealthiest owners in professional sports and the owner of 11 ranches in Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, and British Columbia. The Waggoner went on the market in 2014 after Judge Bird ordered a sale to end more than 20 years of family litigation...
Kroenke recently decided to move his National Football League team from St. Louis to a privately financed $1.8 billion stadium in Inglewood, Calif. Along with the Rams, he also owns the National Basketball Association’s Denver Nuggets, the National Hockey League’s Colorado Avalanche, Major League Soccer’s Colorado Rapids, and two-thirds of the English Premier League’s Arsenal soccer club. Kroenke’s fortune is worth about $6.2 billion, according to Bloomberg estimates.
The Waggoner is the largest U.S. ranch within one fence, marketed as measuring 520,527 acres (210,650 hectares), or 800 square miles (2,072 square kilometers). The sale to Kroenke will include additional acreage that brings the total to about 535,000. The King Ranch, based in South Texas, has more acreage spread over several parcels....With 6,800 head of cattle, the Waggoner is one of the 20 largest cattle ranches in the U.S. and is known worldwide for its quarter horses, which number 500. The ranch also has 1,000 oil wells, 30,000 acres of cropland, and an abundance of deer, quail, feral hogs, waterfowl, and other wildlife.

Well, at least he can't move this to LA.

Interesting News on the Agribusiness Front

Bloomberg:

Dow Chemical Co. is in late-stage merger talks with DuPont Co., people with knowledge of the matter said.
A deal could be announced as soon as this week, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. After the merger, the company would break into two or three businesses because of regulatory and other issues, the people said. There is no guarantee a deal will get done and talks could still fall apart, the people said.
A combination would create the world’s second-biggest chemical company behind BASF SE and the world’s biggest seed and pesticide company, surpassing Monsanto Co.
Representatives of both companies declined to comment.

Whether this happens or not, there will be mergers in agribusiness.  The near-term future will not be kind to businesses in agriculture.

Iowa Farmer Plows 'Bernie' in Field

Des Moines Register:

People driving by or flying over Mike Pattavina's farm in Clarinda will see one of the largest and unique political signs in the state. Pattavina plowed a quarter to a half-acre of his soybean field to spell "BERNIE," all free-hand, in support of the Democratic presidential candidate.

"I've never seen anything like this, so I thought I would do something different," Pattavina said. "I'm a huge supporter of Bernie's."

Pattavina said he came up with the idea after people stole his Bernie Sanders yard signs. He said it only took around 20 to 30 minutes to plow through the field with his tractor. This is his first time plowing a design in a field. The "B" in the field is nearly 60 feet tall.

"Of course, that can't be stolen," Pattavina said.

He plans on caucusing for Sanders and he will canvass for him in the winter.

"I think he's honest and he's working for the working-class people," Pattavina said. "He's sincere. When you go back and look at his past, he hasn't changed."

That's pretty cool.  I may spread manure to spell out "CRUZ."  That would best express my feelings for Tailgunner Ted.  If I did it, I would have to quickly incorporate it, lest somebody mistake me for a supporter of that jackass.  One thing is for sure, I'd never be quoted as saying Cruz was honest or working for the working class people because he is neither.  In case you haven't noticed I've settled on Cruz to replace Scott Walker as the candidate I most like to hate.

Why Are Voters Mad As Hell?

This might be one of the main reasons:

The typical man with a full-time job–the one at the statistical middle of the middle–earned  $50,383 last year, the Census Bureau reported this week.
The typical man with a full-time job in 1973 earned $53,294, measured in 2014 dollars to adjust for inflation.
You read that right: The median male worker who was employed year-round and full time earned less in 2014 than a similarly situated worker earned four decades ago. And those are the ones who had jobs.
This one fact, tucked in Table A-4 of the Census Bureau’s annual report on income, is both a symptom of an economy that isn’t delivering for many ordinary Americans and at least one reason for the dissatisfaction, anger, and distrust that voters are displaying in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Now one major caveat is that this number doesn't include health insurance costs, which have skyrocketed and have eaten up every bit of the additional compensation the average worker would have gotten over the last 40 years.  But, in fact, everyone making less than the median income has fared even worse.  No wonder so many voters are pissed off.

Jeb!'s Tax "Plan"

Shocker:

More Cowbell!

Some Labor Day Statistics

The LA Times highlights some of Bernie Sanders' talking points:

More here.  The amazing thing is that the only person with any ideas (that would work) about addressing this is the Donald.  The fact that all the rest of the Republicans are pushing tax cuts for the wealthy shows who owns that party.

The Economics of Mass-Market Events

Yesterday saw two of the largest non-major sporting events going, the Kentucky Derby and the Mayweather-Pacquiao bout.  The money involved is amazing.  For the Kentucky Derby:

The Derby is a bright spot for an industry that’s been declining for years. Betting nationwide has shrunk by a third since 2003, to $10.6 billion last year from a peak of $15.2 billion, according to the Jockey Club, an industry group.
Saturday’s Kentucky Derby already has one guaranteed winner: The company that hosts the storied race will earn about $83 million for a spectacle that lasts a little more than two minutes.
Churchill Downs Inc. has seven casinos and tracks in the U.S., as well as its namesake property in Louisville. Yet the Run for the Roses will produce 30 percent of annual earnings, according to Cameron McKnight, a Wells Fargo Securities analyst. He estimates the race will generate record earnings this year, rising by $5 million, or 6 percent.
To keep profit climbing and entertain the 165,000 or so on hand for racing’s biggest day, Churchill Downs has poured $180 million into the track since 2001. Three years ago, the company opened the Mansion, an area with its own entrance, chefs and 322 seats that average $10,000 each on Derby day. Other additions include a jumbo screen for grandstand fans and 20 finish-line boxes for horse owners....
Tracks like Suffolk Downs, near Boston, and Hollywood Park, in Southern California, have dropped live racing or been razed, and the industry’s biggest players, such as Churchill Downs and Penn National Gaming Inc., have expanded with casinos as the industry has declined.
Slightly more than half of the Derby’s profit comes from premium ticket sales, according to McKnight. TV rights and sponsorships account for 23 percent, while betting is 16 percent. Food and beverages, including 120,000 mint juleps, the race’s signature drink, amount to just 4 percent....

So 30 percent of the company's earnings come from one day's event, even though they have seven facilities [disclosure: I am a Churchill Downs shareholder].  And of that 30 percent, almost half of that comes from the 170,000 people who attend the event.  Meanwhile, in the ring:

Floyd Mayweather won a unanimous decision over Manny Pacquiao in the most lucrative bout in boxing history to remain undefeated at 48-0 and lay claim to being the best pound-for-pound fighter of his generation.
The welterweight fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas was expected to draw more than $300 million in revenue, largely from pay-per-view purchases and ticket sales. The fight benefited from almost six years of buildup, as the two camps bickered over drug testing and revenue splits....
Nicknamed “Money,” Mayweather was the world’s highest-paid athlete last year, joining Tiger Woods as the second jock to make more than $100 million in one year. With his cut of the record-setting purse, Mayweather topped $500 million in career earnings. The fighters will share about 60 percent to 70 percent of the estimated $250 million in pay-per-view purchases -- with Mayweather getting about 60 percent of that -- and the rest going to the networks and carriers holding broadcast rights.
Mayweather and Pacquiao also will share about $72 million in gate, an estimated $11 million in sponsorships and at least $35 million in international television rights.

So, approximately 3 million pay-per-view viewers, and 12,000 or so actual attendees will create $300 million in revenue for a handful of beneficiaries, including the two participants.  I don't know whether these numbers only account for viewers in the United States, or whether it includes folks in the Philippines and around the rest of the world.  If it is just the United States, that is less than 1 percent of the population.  From an economic perspective, it is this mass-market profit phenomenon that was first really noticeable in the Gilded Era with the rise of Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and the various railroad barons that I think makes the progressive income tax necessary.

Ferguson: An Extreme Example of Our Misplaced Economic Priorities

The Atlantic:

Outwardly, at least, the City of Ferguson would appear to occupy an enviable position. It is home to a Fortune 500 firm [Emerson Electric]. It has successfully revitalized a commercial corridor through its downtown. It hosts an office park filled with corporate tenants. Its coffers should be overflowing with tax dollars.
Instead, the cash-starved municipality relies on its cops and its courts to extract millions in fines and fees from its poorest residents, issuing thousands of citations each year. Those tickets plug a financial hole created by the ways in which the city, the county, and the state have chosen to apportion the costs of public services. A century or more of public-policy choices protect the wallets of largely white business and property owners and pass the bills along to disproportionately black renters and local residents. It's easy to see the drama of a fatal police shooting, but harder to understand the complexities of municipal finances that created many thousands of hostile encounters, one of which turned fatal.....How can all this be happening in a community that is home to a Fortune 500 company? Why is the city government filling out its budget with municipal court fines when Emerson Electric is doing $24 billion a year in business out of its headquarters on West Florissant Avenue?...
But Ferguson is extraordinarily constrained in its ability to pay for the services that its residents require. Municipal tax revenue is limited by the Missouri constitution. In 1980, Representative Mel Hancock—the founder of a group called the Taxpayer Survival Association—wrote an amendment that required any increase of local taxes, licenses, or fees to be approved by a citywide referendum, with very few exceptions. Along with gun-license fees, which are explicitly exempted from the provisions of the “Hancock Amendment,” municipal fines provide Missouri cities with one of the few sources of revenue they can expand without a referendum.
The Hancock Amendment, like similar laws in other states, radically constrains the possibilities of municipal governance. Unable to raise tax rates, many municipal governments have only one tool at their disposal: lowering them. They cannot raise money, but they can give it away.
Take Emerson Electric. On July 27, 2009, Emerson opened a brand-new $50 million flagship data center on its Ferguson campus. Subsequent press reports about the data center were filled with numbers: 100 dignitaries at the ribbon cutting, including Missouri Governor Jay Nixon; 35,000 square feet; 550 solar panels; $100,000 in annual energy savings for the company; ability to withstand an 8.0 magnitude earthquake. They noted how many people Emerson employed globally, nationally, and in the St. Louis metropolitan area, although the number of people who might eventually be employed in the new data center itself was hard to find.
In fact, a state-of-the art data center might eventually employ about two dozen people, none of whom were guaranteed to live in (or anywhere near) Ferguson...
In 2014, the assessed valuation of real and personal property on Emerson’s entire 152-acre, seven-building campus was roughly $15 million. That value has gone up and down over the last five years as Emerson has sold off some buildings and built others, but it has not exceeded $15 million in the period since the data center was completed. So what happened to that brand-new $50 million dollar building?
One explanation would be if Emerson had received a Chapter 353 “local real property tax abatement” to support the construction of the building....Even after a 2013 property tax increase (from $0.65 to the state-maximum $1 per $100 of assessed value), Ferguson received an estimated $68,000 in property taxes from the corporate headquarters that occupies 152 acres of its tax base—not even enough to pay the municipal judge and his clerk to hand out the fines and sign the arrest warrants.

Read the entire article.  The massive efforts to keep communities segregated, the giveaways to corporations, developers and other monied interests, the shifting of the tax burden onto the poorest members of the community: they are all just extreme examples of how our society has been structured to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor.  I really thought that the Great Recession would make it clear to everybody that these policies had to end.  I believed it would be obvious that a consumption-based economy wouldn't function when consumers couldn't afford to keep consuming.  I was wrong.  In the face of obvious signs that we'd been doing almost everything wrong in our economy for 30 years, conservatives, who somehow managed to take control of more of the state and local governments than they had when they drove the economy into the ground (mainly because the wealthy, the elderly and rural whites vote much more frequently than urban dwellers, the young and minorities) have doubled down on the failed policies that increased inequality and eroded the middle class.  Ferguson, St. Louis County and Missouri are extreme examples of what happens when these failed policies are given free rein, but they are by no means the only examples.  Any state with a Republican governor and a Republican-controlled legislature is putting similar policies in place: handing our corporate welfare, cutting income taxes and increasing sales taxes and other regressive forms of revenue, such as fines and fees.  Spending on education is capped, or funneled to privately-run charter schools and well-off suburban schools at the expense of urban and rural districts.  Infrastructure spending is put off.  Public worker pensions are underfunded and starved to the point of insolvency.  Programs supporting the ever-growing cadre of poor citizens are cut. But income taxes can always be cut (which always return the largest amounts to the wealthiest citizens who have no need for it), and tax giveaways are always available for "economic development."  These policies will continue to lead to greater inequality, and will continue to trigger demonstrations and riots, like we saw last year in Ferguson, and today in Baltimore.  Our government for the rich at the expense of the poor is reaching the breaking point.  Can we change the system before it gets burned down?

Wisconsin Supreme Court For Sale?

A referendum was passed in a low-turnout election in Wisconsin on Tuesday to change the way the Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court is chosen.  This sounds so bad it almost has to be an exaggeration:

On the surface, what happened yesterday looks like just a small change in how the Wisconsin Supreme Court chooses a chief justice. In fact, it's much more.
The referendum was rushed onto the spring-election ballot when little else was up for a vote, guaranteeing a low turnout. And Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), a group aptly described by the Center for Media and Democracy as "Wisconsin's premier lobby for corporate tax breaks and low-wage jobs," poured in $600,000 at the last minute to back the measure.
The result: One of America's finest jurists may no longer be Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. For 126 years the chief justice has been chosen by seniority. Under that system, Shirley Abrahamson has held that post since 1996. In Wisconsin, Supreme Court justices are elected -- and the voters reelected Abrahamson to another 10-year term as Chief Justice in 2009. But now the state constitution has been amended so the justices will elect their chief. Chief Justice Abrahamson has filed a lawsuit to retain her position as Chief Justice for the remainder of her current term. Thanks to massive expenditures by groups such as WMC, which has spent at least $5.5 million on Supreme Court races since 2007, there is a conservative majority on the court -- likely guaranteeing that, unless Abrahamson's lawsuit succeeds, there will be a conservative chief justice at the helm.
But that's just the beginning. There's another backdoor effort underway to force Abrahamson off the court entirely by setting a mandatory retirement age of 75. Abrahamson is 81, and the people of Wisconsin reelected her to serve for four more years.
And there's more:
The conservative majority on the court lowered the court's conflict-of-interest standards. They approved changes in requirements for when justices must "recuse" themselves -- that is, decline to participate in a case. Now special interests can appear before judges to whom they've made campaign contributions -- and they can give money to judges even as those judges are presiding over cases to which the donors are parties.
The changes were written by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce.

I guess owning the legislative and executive branches just isn't enough. 

We've Been There Before

From Mother Jones:

When/how does it get back to 10%?

News of the Obvious: State and Local Taxes are Regressive

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy ran an analysis that most folks with a lick of common sense and a bit of understanding about political interests would figure out on their own, that state an local taxes are pretty regressive, and cost poor folks a lot larger slice of their income than they cost wealthy people.  I mainly skimmed the report and looked at the graphics, but I seriously doubt that conservatives will punch many holes in their analysis.  Here is a chart showing the impact of state and local taxes on different income brackets nationwide:

This chart is a little more useful when your state's Republican party proposes "tax reform" or "income tax cuts."  It demonstrates who benefits and who is harmed by various tax changes:

Yeah, it is shocking that when states like Kansas and Ohio increase sales taxes and cut income taxes it is the wealthiest residents who benefit, and the poorest residents who are harmed.  Same goes for cigarette tax increases.  Whodathunkit?  Actually, Ohio is even more regressive than the national average, in spite of a somewhat progressive income tax:

I would hypothesize that one reason for this is because numerous municipal and school district income taxes (which many other states don't have) hit earned income much harder than unearned income (dividends and capital gains, for instance).  I only pay city income tax on the fairly small portion of my income coming from my town job.  Also, Kasich's entirely stupid plan to exempt half of the first $250,000 in income from pass-through entities keeps me from paying state income tax on 50% of the income from my farm partnership with dad.  Here are a few of the explanations from the report:

• Kansas enacted more changes to its personal income tax on top of those already passed in 2012. Tax rates are gradually reduced to 2.3 and 3.9 percent and both standard and itemized deductions are pared back. The food sales tax rebate was reinstated, but made nonrefundable. If revenue targets are reached in future years, the income tax could be repealed entirely. Kansas also increased its sales tax from 5.7 to 6.15 percent.

• North Carolina replaced its graduated personal income tax rate structure with a flat rate of 5.75 percent and enacted several other changes to the tax including: the elimination of all credits except for the child tax credit (this included allowing the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit to expire), elimination of per­sonal exemptions, elimination of a $50,000 deduction for business pass-through income, an increased standard deduction, eliminating most itemized deductions and subjecting property taxes and mortgage interest to a $20,000 cap and allowing unlimited charitable contribution deductions. The package also expanded the sales tax base, increased sales taxes on electricity, and phases-in a corporate income tax rate cut that will eventually bring the rate from 6.9 to 3 percent.

• Ohio reduced personal income tax rates across the board and exempted 50 percent of business pass-through income from the tax (capped at the first $250,000). The state also enacted a very limited non­refundable EITC equal to 5 percent of the federal credit in 2013 and expanded it to 10 percent in 2014. At the same time, the state’s sales tax was increased from 5.5 to 5.75 percent and its base was expanded.

• The District of Columbia cut income tax rates for middle-income residents and increased the standard deduction. Further rate cuts, as well as increases in the standard deduction and personal exemption, could take effect if revenue grows sufficiently quickly. The District of Columbia also phased-out its per­sonal exemption for high-income taxpayers and made permanent its 8.95 percent income tax bracket on high-income earners. The city’s EITC was expanded for childless workers and its property tax cir­cuit breaker was enhanced. The business franchise tax rate was cut from 9.975 to 9.4 percent, and could see further cuts to 8.25 percent contingent on revenue growth. DC’s sales tax base was also expanded, while its rate was lowered from 6.0 to 5.75 percent. The city also reformed its gas tax so that the rate can grow alongside gas prices in the future.

It is interesting to see how Republican (and ALEC-backed) tax changes seem to go from one state to another, like some kind of hideous virus.  For instance, Kansas went with the pass-through tax exemption, then Ohio and Missouri followed suit.  Ohio got rid of the business personal property tax, now Michigan is following.  Very rarely do these changes benefit people at the lower end of the income spectrum.

No matter how you figure it, people making less than $250,000 and voting Republican are suckers.