Craft Beer vs Walker's Special Interests, and Jobs vs Wages in Wisconsin.

Now that vacation has ended, here are a few things that have been building up and should be on the front burner.

1. Walker's Complete Failure to Notice the skyrocketing Craft Brewing/Job Creating Industry: Just like he did with the dairy industry, Scott Walker's ideological tunnel vision has steered clear of the difficult job of actually solving current and emerging industry problems, like craft alcohol. We're only now reluctantly having to deal with another famous Wisconsin product, beer. Seriously?:

Cap Times-Katelyn Ferral: Will Glass, a brewer and president of the Wisconsin Craft Beverage Coalition, which represents 250 breweries, wineries and distilleries in the state, said the Legislative Study Committee on Alcohol Beverages Enforcement ... aiming to clarify the state’s alcohol laws is "stacked against" small breweries, wineries and distilleries (Rep. Rob Swearingen, R-Rhinelander, who chairs the alcohol study committee runs a supper club) (and) is headed in the wrong direction. Glass said the scope of the committee should be wider, allowing for the creation of new laws to accommodate a changing craft alcohol beverage industry.

Of the four draft bills ... two would ban breweries and wineries from selling each other's products in their tasting rooms, a practice in which many already engage. "This is bad because we're trying to take this in the opposite direction. We’re looking to ... flexibility," said Glass. "There are businesses that right now are brewpubs that want to get into production. They would have to give up their ability to serve wine and liquor, which in their restaurant, would make it hard to succeed.”

Eric Bott, director of the conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity in Wisconsin, agrees. "The committee should focus on fixing a broken law and making Wisconsin the best state in the country for the hospitality sector," he said. "Instead, it's pursuing the same old protectionist agenda that created this mess in the first place."

Oddly it’s always about Jobs, NOT WAGES: I didn't really take notice of this idea until I read the Cap Times article below. 

Just like President Trump, Walker talks a lot about jobs, but not about wages.

The words of Alexandria Cortez-Ocasio in one of the ads that helped carry her to victory in NY: “Rent gets higher, health care covers less, and our income stays the same.” And recent data confirm Cortez-Ocasio’s claim.
And the last thing Republicans want to discuss is wages. Gov. Walker … opposed increasing the minimum wage.

It's important to remember these two Scott Walker comments as it applies to jobs vs wages:

Scott Walker: "The left claims that they're for American workers and they've just got really lame ideas — things like the minimum wage. Instead of focusing on that, we need to talk about how we get people ... the careers that pay far more than the minimum wage."

So Walker did just that, talked, and never got anyone "far more than the minimum wage."

International Business Times: The DWD issued a statement saying: "Governor Walker wants jobs in Wisconsin that pay two or three times the minimum wage."

Stepping even further into the surreal, Walker even disputed how people would interpret the simple question, "should we increase the minimum wage." Would I kid you?

But here’s where the interesting twist comes into play...

Further, as Tomas Frank has insightfully pointed out, many in the contemporary Democratic Party see economic problems as fundamentally education problems ... educate more people, and those new bachelor’s degree-holders will be able to obtain higher-paying jobs.

But things haven’t worked out this way. By every measure, educational attainment in the U.S. has steadily increased for decades, and yet wage stagnation and economic inequality have increased as well. Simply educating more people does not create more middle-class jobs for those newly educated people to obtain. And the more we focus on the educational system, the less we consider the many public policies and private-sector practices that are the actual causes of wage stagnation.

Red State Missouri voters Protect Unions, but not Wisconsin: It seems Walker hit all the right notes when he passed right-to-work here. No public outrage? But…

...Missouri voters blocked the implementation of a right-to-work law by a whopping margin of roughly 35 percent, clearly illustrating that citizens in a red state see the value of labor unions during a time of growing economic insecurity. And Elizabeth Warren’s Accountable Capitalism Act proposes a return to a time not long ago when corporations were not simply beholden to the interests of shareholders, but also to employees, communities, and customers.

Here are a few details in Elizabeth Warren's plan. And if we wanted to play the game of "resentment," let's use Warren's own words, "Workers aren't getting what they've earned:"

Under the legislation, corporations with more than $1bn in annual revenue would be required to obtain a corporate charter from the federal government – and the document would mandate that companies not just consider the financial interests of shareholders … businesses would have to consider … workers, customers, and the cities and towns where those corporations operate.

Large companies dedicated 93% of their earnings to shareholders between 2007 and 2016 – a shift from the early 1980s, when they sent less than half their revenue to shareholders and spent the rest on employees and other priorities, Warren said. “Real wages have stagnated even as productivity has continued to rise. Workers aren’t getting what they’ve earned.”