A few thoughts on Red State Wisconsin Freeloaders...

This blog post is my way of venting, and won't change a thing.

There's a reason why wheel taxes and school referendums are passing all over the state; it's to make up for local shortfalls due to our statewide property tax cap and lower sales/income taxes championed by Republicans. Scott Walker and the GOP have all but killed the idea that when we all pay into the state, the costs are lower than if we pay individually.

Dane County Executive Joe Parisi (said), "I think (Wisconsin Republicans) made a deliberate decision that their main goal, despite the stated goal of creating jobs, was to destroy their enemies."

The GOP logic for tax cuts is a mind-blower: It's our national tax ranking. That's it! There's nothing fiscally responsible about it.

Wisconsin is now so out of whack, it's really hard to nail down just what anyone can do about it. Republicans have successfully convince everyone in the state that there is a free lunch, taxes are too high, and more cuts are always the answer. It's a political brand they brag about in election year ads, but it's not real.

We've become a state of freeloaders, expecting something for nothing, without ever paying forward what we got from so many previous generations.

A recent story in the Middleton Times-Tribune made all of this so much clearer, with a fee now added to their water bills. As you can see below, it's all just GOP created smoke and mirrors:

Permanent Out-of-Whack Tax Cuts: Like the failed Taxpayer-Bill-of-Right (TABOR), ratcheting down taxes along with a often repeated "taxes are too high" message, there is no going back. It would now be political suicide to change how lopsided things have become:

WPR:  In other states, local sales taxes and income taxes fund much larger shares of municipal budgets, putting less strain on homeowners and other property owners. Rob Henken, president of the Wisconsin Policy Forum said, "It's the extent to which we are different. It's the extent of that reliance with virtually no other forms of broad local taxation."

This is just how out-of-whack we've become:

Nationally in 2015, cities received about 23 percent of their revenue from property taxes and 21 percent from sales and income taxes.

In Wisconsin, by contrast, municipalities received about 42 percent of their revenue from the property tax, but only about 1.6 percent from sales and income taxes.

Seriously!!! The lower income tax is a gift to the wealthy, surprised?

This all came about because the state decided to spend more on schools, BadgerCare, and prisons, capping local property taxes along the way. Who knew Republicans would reverse that spending:

Henken doesn't recommend a specific policy change ... arguing it could be easier to address now than it would be later. "The economy is doing well. It is often easier to make big changes to revenue structures at times when economic growth is occurring."

But we know that isn't going to happen in our lifetime, so the reality is coming into focus; this is no longer the Wisconsin I grew up in and loved.

It's now strictly a political state Scott Walker can hold up as an example of right-wing values that no longer include dairy farmers, outdoor recreation and sports, and homegrown friendly communities working together. It's time to fight each other. From a previous post:

This is Wisconsin Now? Walker thinks "fighting" is good, a way to bring us together: 

Harwood: "When you talk about fighting and winning, sometimes when I hear that, it sounds to me like the emphasis is on the fighting, almost like you're running to be the hockey team enforcer."

Walker: "Well I think right now people do want to fight in America. I think people want a fighter who can win, get the results. I fought, I won, I got results, and I did it without violating my conservative principles."

Nothing says dangerous disconnect more than ignoring what divides this country...because that will only bring us together:

Huffington Post-Don't Focus On 'Racial Discord' Or You'll Only Create More: "If we focus on unity we’re going to get more of that ... We need to change the tone in America from chants and rallies that fixate on racial division."

Walker's non-answers on Immigrant Farm workers, Dairy Prices, Roads, and Education.

Scott Walker already has a bad reputation for not answering direct simple questions, so it should come as no surprise that he continued that tradition during the first gubernatorial debate.

Take for instance his embarrassing answer explaining why 4 of his former cabinet Secretaries came out with scathing criticisms of Walker's character; Walker said he likes hiring people with "diverse opinions"...that call him a liar and that he lacked integrity?  I still get a chuckle out of that one. Who thinks like that?

NOTE: Confirmed below as well, Walker really is exploiting what should be a very personal family issue; the death of his father. He even stumbled bringing it up, wedging it in purposely, expecting a sympathy vote on election day? Wow:



Walker never even stood up for, or defended, Harley Davidson from Trump's irresponsible demand that people stop buying their motorcycles! He left that up to trade policy and Trump's tariffs. Hey, what could he do?

Media Ignores Immigrant Farm Labor, not Me: Now Walker can't even defend struggling farmers in our state who need immigrant labor. Again no criticism for Trump or Congress, and no pressure to come up with an immigration policy that keeps farm labor here and protected. Democratic candidate Tony Evers offered solutions, while Walker never committed, and again shift blame off to Washington. And ag groups endorsed Walker? Walker's rehearsed "As I've mentioned, we're a nation of immigrants but we're also a nation of laws..." was another sick non-answer.

NOTE: Coincidence? Nope, Walker also mentions that he froze tuition at the same time his kids went to college. Don't you wish you could have done that?:

Tony Evers said he supports allowing undocumented workers to obtain state driver's licenses to get to and from work and providing in-state tuition for so-called Dreamers, or undocumented students who came to the country with their parents.

Walker repeatedly said "we are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws," and did not say he would favor either proposal.

Walker sadly won't protect "America's Dairyland;" The oversupply of milk is huge. Instead of controlling the supply, organizing the states to protect dairy farmers here and around the nation, and urge the milk marketers to get off their asses, Walker simply asked everyone "at home, to eat more cereal and eat more cheese," yea, a real healthy diet there. That should go well with your nitrate laden ham sandwiches Scotty:



The Scott Walker Tax!!! Tony Evers nailed it because when it comes right down to it, there's no free lunch. For many of Walker's tax cuts, local communities had to increase their taxes, which keeps Walker's record clean.

  

Education Gov. Walker and Right-Wing Elites attack public schools again saying, "you're going to love our tax cuts, whether you like it or not."

"You're going to love our tax cuts, whether you like it or not."

The "fellows" at the loony bin of right-wing politics, the MacIver Institute, are saying desperate school districts are trying to avoid "education" Gov. Scott Walker's latest attack on our public schools by taking away the Energy Efficiency Exemption. Yea right, "supposed energy efficiency," like anyone cares about that?

...the termination of the Energy Efficiency Exemption (EEE). This loophole allowed school districts to raise taxes for supposed energy efficiency projects without going to referendum. Last year alone, districts collected an additional $92.3 million through the EEE. With the program eliminated, property taxes in those 148 school districts will automatically drop $92.3 million.

Flat earth Republicans have again drummed up phony outrage over school districts attempts to save energy costs by upgrading systems and building new schools that are environmentally friendly and better learning environments. Yea, like climate change, is real.

Republicans not only hate the clean energy push, but they are also desperate to preserve high fuel costs for Big Energy campaign donors. So they're claiming districts are scamming taxpayers with promises of energy savings when all they want to do is trick them into building modern high tech schools. As the Cap Times' "State Debate" put it...

The conservative MacIver Institute's Bill Osmulski complains that Wisconsin school districts are using "massive tax cuts" engineered by Scott Walker and the Republican Legislature to mask "huge" referendum tax hikes. It seems the harder state officials try to cut taxes, the harder local school district officials try to figure out ways to spend, he asserts.

It's alright to laugh. Check out the MacIver "News" services comment below, and tell me if their logic could also be applied to the massive and "considerable" Foxconn handout that won't be paid off for 30 or more years. Ironic?

The energy savings on many of these projects is negligible. It will be decades before the savings justify the expense – which was considerable. 

 Crazy isn't it? I remember not too long ago when the steel pole building-like Kromrey Middle School had a massive and dangerous mold problem. There were giant fans airing out rooms and hallways 24/7 because of its outdated or nonexistent ventilation system. At a district meeting with parents, there were some who didn't care and thought a new school was an overreaction, that the unsolvable problem was something we could live with.

So after cutting the EEE, districts will see a "tax cut"...unless they smartly propose what would be a revenue-neutral spending referendum. Did you ever get the idea that families actually want their kids to get a great education, putting that first, above tax cuts?

Their mindless whining continued, with MacIver "fellows" condescendingly saying district residents just don't understand these "tricks" or how to spend their money wisely. But I thought people knew best?

Throughout the state, there are a total of 61 districts going to referendum next month. The combined cost is $1.25 billion for construction, $157 million for one-time operations, and $26 million in permanent annual operations spending. Not all of those districts have the EEE “opportunity levy” to exploit, but there are other ways to create the same illusion of little to no tax impact. 

Authoritarian Much? MacIver wants you to believe that the "conservative elite" at the state Capitol, Walker, Republican "leaders," and think tanks should be calling all the shots, not you. Like they say, "You're going to love our tax cuts, whether you like it or not."

From the tactics and literature accompanying this year’s referendums, it appears the harder the state works to provide property tax relief, the harder local school officials will work to keep local taxpayers from ever benefiting from it.

Walker thinks adding back $1.4 billion in lost state revenue would "take out a lot of growth and prosperity!!!

Scott Walker passed a manufacturing/Ag tax credit that zeroed out state taxes for entitled companies and businesses that passed the burden of educating their future employees to taxpaying families.

Since when did that make any sense, and why did conservative voters go along with getting stuck with the bill through local school referendums?

Even worse, it's upside down thinking like Walker's that supposedly created this quid pro quo to special interest corporate campaign contributors with no job creation requirement.

WPR: Walker told members of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce at a luncheon in Madison, "About 88 percent of all the recipients ... are small businesses. Businesses that make less than $1 million a year. If we were to wipe that out, we would be taking out a lot of the growth and prosperity in the state."

Really, restoring this massive loss of tax revenue "would be taking out a lot of prosperity in the state?" That's how upside down Wisconsin politics has become under Walker's bent out shape priorities. Walker's political spin couldn't change the Legislative Fiscal Bureau numbers:

The Legislature's nonpartisan budget office projects the credit will have cost state government a total of $1.4 billion by the end of the current budget in June. It's projected to cost state government roughly $295 million this year alone.

And those "88 percent of all recipeints" that "are small businesses"?

The 88 percent figure cited by Walker reflects the total number of filers who took advantage of the tax credit according to a memo by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. But that same memo showed that the wealthiest 12 percent of all recipients received roughly 73 percent of the payout, an amount that totaled $159 million in 2017.

 Here's WPR's Shawn Johnson's story:

Wisconsinites still not getting anywhere under Trump and Walker.

In an email newsletter, the Economic Policy Institute said this about the GOP/Trump/Ryan tax cut, along with the Republican argument that blames us for not being smart enough to notice how much larger are paychecks were. Not kidding. But voters are getting wise to them:

It’s been nine months since the tax bill was signed into law, and the rapid surge in investment promised by proponents of the TCJA has still yet to materialize. 

In short, that $4,000 raise promised by Donald Trump and Paul Ryan hasn’t materialized. The administration has been reduced to claiming that workers don’t know their own pay and would see benefits from the tax cut if they just knew how to calculate their salary correctly, but EPI researchers have explained why this is wrong.[1][2]

The reality is that instead of investing in the U.S. economy through wage hikes and new good-paying jobs, corporations are instead rewarding CEOs and wealthy shareholders with their windfall tax breaks. But instead of prioritizing policies that actually raise the wages of working people, the House of Representatives plans on voting this week on a second round of tax breaks that mostly benefit those at the top.

Short story; Paul Ryan oddly screwed over homeowner's "wealth," measured by the value of their home, by changing home equity lines of credit. Before, families could buy things like a car or help pay for their kid's tuition and get an interest deduction, but not anymore. Republican took it away, leaving the deduction for home improvements only. Why Republicans did this, who knows?

Here in Wisconsin, you would have thought we were all swimming in money, jobs and tax cuts like most of Scott Walker's corporate friends and business donors. But like everything having to do with "trickle down," it didn't happen. 

COWS, the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, just issued a report that details what's really going on:

The state and nation have yet to pull out of a decades-long trend of wage stagnation...

The Center on Wisconsin Strategy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (issued the) State of Working Wisconsin 2018 report. Laura Dresser, the center’s associate director (said) ... In 1979 the median worker in Wisconsin earned $17.30 an hour, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars. As of 2017, the median worker in the state earned about $18.30 an hour.

"We've seen productivity and gross domestic product grow substantially over that period. The average return to the worker is about 3 cents an hour per year over that period to get that dollar more now. That's long-term wage stagnation. We've been seeing it even in this low-unemployment time, and that's a really troubling sign."

While Scott Walker measures success by how many ideological and theoretical economic risks he got passed into law, the rest of us toiling away in the real world got nothing, so many desperately voted for Trump. That's how bad it still is in Wisconsin: 

The state's economy as a whole is "treading water" over the long term (for the last 7 years), and 2018's measures represent a mere return to 2000 levels ... rather than a new age of prosperity ... analysts have stressed that the state's economic gains are leaving behind people of color and rural residents, and that Wisconsinites are persistently stuck in low-wage jobs.

1. Wisconsin's African-American unemployment rate is 9 percent ... the worst in the nation. 

2. And that rural counties are among those with the highest unemployment ... losing jobs and urban areas grow them. 

3. Previous reports even found wages declining for some groups, including African-American men ... 

4. 675,000 Wisconsin workers are earning $12 or less per hour.

"That's one in five workers," she said. "I think sometimes people feel like, 'I worked in a low-wage job once.' But when you see that one in five workers is in a job paying $12 an hour or less, you know that those workers have a fraction of the health-care benefits through their employment, and pension, and even sick leave is hard to get at below $12 an hour. It's just a different reality for many, many workers."

Walker's Tax Hikes; Privatized Election Trouble; Paul Ryan won't stop Armed Stalkers and ex-Boyfriends!

Walker’s Hiden Tax Hikes!!!: Gubernatorial candidate Tony Evers is right, Walker's Wisconsin really hasn’t cut taxes much, he’s just shifted it and passed those increases off to local governments by way of school referendums and wheel taxes. And the zero tax on agriculture and manufacturing lets industry off the hook to educate and train their own eventual workforce. When did that become alright? Who does that? Like Evers said, priorities are truly out of whack. WPR:

 "Right now, Wisconsin priorities are out of whack," Evers said. Evers proposed a $1.4 billion budget for K-12 schools over the 2019-21 biennium. "Taxes have gone up under Scott Walker, all those millions of people who voted for school referenda — they did it because Scott Walker has decided not to fund their public schools." He also pointed out wheel taxes to cover road repair work in response to insufficient state allocations. 

"It’s always about priorities — we found $4.5 billion for Foxconn suddenly out of thin air." Evers said he may consider "shifting" income taxes to do away with policies that benefit high earners, including the manufacturing and agriculture tax credit. 

The Walker ... ad saying Evers may raise the gas tax by $1 a gallon to pay for road work. Evers rebuffed that statement. "It’s ridiculous — who the hell would, frankly," he said of a $1 per gallon gas tax increase.

Capitalism now Owns our Elections: And wouldn't you know it, all that concern about voter fraud and the integrity of our elections, fake!!! We’ve handed our basic right to vote to for-profit private businesses because we cut our taxes so much, that states can't fund or manage our elections and voting machines:

Hacks, Security Gaps And Oligarchs: Private companies play a crucial role in elections, from printing and designing ballots, to manufacturing voting machines, to hosting results websites. The industry exists because the local and state governments who run elections don't have the resources or expertise to maintain all aspects of an election themselves.

1. There's the state that discovered a Russian oligarch now finances the company that hosts its voting data.

2. Then there's the company that manufactures and services voter registration software in eight states that found itself hacked by Russian operatives leading up to the 2016 presidential election.

3. And then there's the largest voting machine company in the country, which initially denied and then admitted it had installed software on its systems considered by experts to be extremely vulnerable to hacking.

Paul Ryan Protects 2nd Amendment right to Kill Women: A bit harsh, I know, but true. What else could explain the shocking facts Ryan has decided to ignore. Nothing else:

A short-term extension of the landmark Violence Against Women Act (was) slipped into a must-pass continuing resolution that kept the government funded until Dec. 7. A task force of Democrats and organizations dedicated to fighting domestic violence and sexual assault has been working on how to improve the existing law.

Speaker Paul Ryan won’t update the law to include a gun control that would save women’s lives, it's that simple:

But the poison pill for Republicans is the so-called "boyfriend loophole," to ensure dating partners under a protective order are prohibited from having a firearm. Currently, that law only applies to couples who are married, live together, or share a child. It also extends the firearm prohibition to people accused of stalking. Finally, it restricts people under temporary restraining orders from possessing a gun. 

The task force offers staggering statistics to back up these requests: Nearly half of women killed by intimate partners are killed by dating partners, and 75 percent of women murdered by intimate partners and 85 percent of women who survived murder attempts were stalked first. A 10-city study cited by the task force found that 20 percent of homicide victims with temporary protective orders were murdered within two days of obtaining the order.

Business Tax Cuts Raising Homeowner Taxes, plus Trump Trade Reform makes for "Tough Economy" and possible Lowest Net Farm Income since 2006!

Scott Walker's version of success with better times ahead is basically wishful thinking that passes as Bizarro World truth...and that's never good, as you can see by their code...

The Trump economy, and ongoing trade talks, have been a big help...?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture projected the country's net farm income to be $59.5 billion in 2018, a 6.7 percent decrease from 2017's forecast … the fifth year of lower income levels after a record high in 2013 (Obama) at $123.8 billion. If the forecast is accurate, this year will have the lowest U.S. net farm income since 2006.

Paul Mitchell, professor of agricultural at the UW Madison, said “There's uncertainty about trade and that creates some issues." Darin Von Ruden, president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union …  said he’s also heard stories of lenders making exceptions due to the tough economy.

Yes, these little comments have a tendency to slip out from time to time.

Walker, Tax Cutting Governor? Sorry, Wisconsin's Open for Business, not You:

JS: Larry Squires annual property tax bill in December (went) up nearly 14 percent, an increase of more than $260. “I definitely wasn’t happy about it,” Squires said. Neither were many of Manawa's roughly 1,300 residents.

Mayor John Smith said a key reason: Property taxes on the largest employer in town, Sturm Foods, went down … by nearly $10 million last year. “The rest of us taxpayers are going to pay the penalty,” Squires said. Sturm Foods employs nearly as many people as there are city residents. 

In Manawa, where "It's very much a trickle-down effect,” said O’Brien, whose personal property taxes went up by more than $500. “Ultimately it trickles down to the taxpayers."

Corporate Personhood devoid of Social Responsibility: Yup, we’re so grateful to be in their presence, we'll let them take money from our schools:

Manawa had to refund Sturm more than $100,000 for taxes the company asserted it overpaid. The Manawa School District also had to reimburse Sturm more than $83,000 as a result of the settlement, according to Carmen O'Brien, the district’s business manager.

The GOP tips "balance" to Business: None of this is new, Democrats have been saying this for years. But Republicans have re-framed their arguments to mean liberals are anti-business.  

Manufacturers in Wisconsin have erased at least $150 million in taxable value on their plants over the last five years, a USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin analysis has found.

One paper company cut its taxable value by more than $13 million in the Fox Valley and central and northern Wisconsin. Another paper company won a big tax cut and then announced plans to shut down local plants and cut hundreds of jobs. The efforts by manufacturers parallel those of big-box retailers. 

Such action often means homeowners and other property owners have to pay more as local governments seek to make up for the lost tax revenue … 136 companies obtained reduced assessments around the state between 2012 and 2016. Among the largest losers:

► Manufacturers in Milwaukee County reduced their assessed values by more than $18 million, the most of any county. ► Outagamie County is losing $14.5 million. ► Brown County lost more than $11 million, while Sheboygan County lost $7 million and Manitowoc County lost $4.7 million. ► Oneida County lost nearly $4.5 million and Marathon County lost more than $2.5 million in taxable property. ►Expera Specialty Solutions secured one of the biggest cuts … of its paper mills in Kaukauna, De Pere, Mosinee and Rhinelander by a combined $13.6 million.

Small towns may feel the effects more acutely than bigger cities …

Taxes Rise, despite Walker's 100% property tax cut!

My conservative, in-the-tank "Trumpian" friend in Milwaukee, isn't paying any attention to state politics. He's like many Wisconsin voters who have pretty much given up trying to understand what Republicans are doing based on the chaotic messaging put out by Scott Walker and Paul Ryan.

Like this Scott Walker campaign talking point:

Scott Walker's 100% Property Tax Savings: Gee, it sounds good...but:

BUT: As you can see below, that savings is...well, nowhere to be found on my property tax bill. Like a lot of Wisconsinites, their bills may have increased, meaning the price of GOP loyalty comes pretty cheap:

It's a shell game pure and simple. There's no free lunch they say, but you'd never know that listening to Republican legislators and Scott Walker.  It's just another attempt to try and sell that free lunch in a new and improved shining tax cut package. 

Walker is running again on failed supply side record, a campaign that fosters rural resentment, claiming the government is too big, which really means he's willing to squander a century's worth of public investments for a few dollars worth of tax cuts.

GOP Tax Cut effect on Wisconsin? Here's the latest indefensible truth:

In 2019, large corporations and other businesses in Wisconsin would receive 46 cents out of every dollar delivered into the state by the federal GOP tax cut bill, according to a new analysis. $2.5 billion in 2019, or a bit less than the $2.8 billion delivered to individuals and families in the state. But because the bill's tax cuts for individuals are set to expire in 2025, the tax cuts for corporations would easily outweigh them by 2027.

In that year, individual taxpayers would pay $384 million more while large corporations in Wisconsin would still see a tax cut of just under $1 billion.

I think Sen. Tammy Baldwin nailed it for Wisconsin voters:

Walker's "Wisconsin Comeback" may be worse than Kansas Gov. Brownback's, which is now being reversed by Republicans there!!!

I've been calling certain Republican tax cut backers "freeloaders" for years. I'd like to say California Gov. Jerry Brown got it from me, but who cares...:

WND: The latest “gift” from Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democrat-controlled legislature: A $5.2 billion tax hike.

Gov. Brown: “The freeloaders – I’ve had enough of them. They have a president that doesn’t tell the truth and they’re following suit.”

The indignant response by freeloading "tax cut" Republican voters, who hate hearing the truth?

Citizens who work and pay taxes are “freeloading” on the system and have no right to complain about the tax burden government puts on them. It’s amazing how Democrat politicians get so secure in their elected offices that they think they can insult anyone and get away with it.

Yea, that's nothing like Republican politicians so secure in their gerrymandered elected offices that they think they can cut services, destroy access to health care and sell off public investments without consequences? Those damn Democrats huh? 

Basically, the "freeloader" label fits, and conservatives hate it:

All while they continue their political road to increasing the tax and regulation burdens on average citizens. Jerry Brown’s insult is the latest blatant example of that – following the insulting epithet Hillary Clinton laid on voters – calling them “deplorables.” It’s clear that Democrats have no respect for anyone who disagrees with their point of view.

All this is supposed to deal with road and infrastructure repairs – things that should have been done gradually over the years but that, in their “wisdom,” politicians put off and delay until it’s an emergency. It’s almost impossible to survive in California if you don’t drive. Our vehicles are a lifeline to survival for jobs, school and just daily life. Any changes in the price of fuel presents a major hit to every budget.

Anyone else detect the disconnect, incoherence and cluelessness in the above statement? Even worse, the articles writer rattled off the following list while trashing Brown and still pushing tax cuts. This is what makes conservative fiscal policy so unrealistically bad. Freeloader fits...:

As for the freeloading Californians he so disdains, Jerry has lots more in store for them. He still promotes his plan for high-speed rail from southern California to the north. Then there’s his plan for twin water tunnels to move water from north to south – original estimate $17 billion – but the construction overruns and costs to water districts, users and property owners is open ended.

Then, add state pension obligations, bond obligations, health-care costs and the proposal to pay all criminal defense costs for illegals living in the state who face deportation – and the fact that the state budget for next year already shows a $1.6 billion deficit – and you have a lot of freeloaders who will have every right to consider the appeal of getting out while the getting is good.

In fact, more people are leaving the state than moving in ... Consider yourself warned.

You mean the freeloaders? Sad. Funny thing, Republicans are always telling liberals to move if they don't like what's happening in their state. Well, back at you. There are a lot of other "deplorable" states to go to. 

Wisconsin to Fail Like Kansas? The Kansas Comeback was Gov. Scott Walker's basic blueprint for Wisconsin. It was a freeloader formula that gave baby boom politicians lower taxes now, but sky high taxes for their kids to rebuild whatever is left. Thank you? 

See if you can spot the similar failed policies in Kansas below, that we're now seeing passed in Wisconsin. 

You'll notice that this completely contradicts the GOP talking points that every state is unique, or those one-size-fits-all laws are bad. Let's be honest: Republicans have only one plan for every state, BUT there is one huge difference; Wisconsin Republicans will never roll back the tax cuts like they are doing in Kansas:

AP: Some Republicans see lesson in rollback of Kansas tax cuts: The sudden end of Kansas' aggressive income tax reductions serves as a cautionary tale for other GOP-dominated states about the pitfalls of moving too far too quickly … Legislators overrode Republican Gov. Sam Brownback's veto of a bill that largely rolls back the income tax cuts he championed in recent years. Income tax rates will rise, with a new top rate of 5.7 percent instead of the current 4.6 percent. The measure is designed to cover projected budget shortfalls totaling $889 million through June 2019

The state is ending an exemption for more than 330,000 farmers and business owners.

They concluded the cash-strapped state needed the extra revenue to fix the budget and raise additional funds for public schools.

In Missouri, the Republican-led Legislature enacted income tax cuts, and only if revenues grow, in what sponsoring state Sen. Will Kraus called a "totally different" approach than Kansas'.

"The people of Kansas, in my mind, are willing to pay for the services that they value," said Sen. Randall Hardy, a moderate Salina Republican who unseated a Brownback ally last year. "We're going to stop the hemorrhaging."

"We've been highly influenced by conservative policy think-tanks that encouraged us to keep cutting tax revenues in order to show a dynamic effect in the growth of our economy," said state Rep. Leslie Osborn, the Republican chairwoman of the Oklahoma House Appropriations Committee.

Bryan Lowry, at the Kansas City Star: These tax cuts, which Brownback had promised would lead to astronomical job growth, had really become politically toxic over the last four years. The governor promised to gain 25,000 private sector jobs a year during his re-election campaign and the state is nowhere close to achieving that. Kansas ranks 48th in the nation for private sector job growth for April 2016 to April 2017. The tax cuts did not pay for themselves.

Oh, and don't forget to blame someone else, just pick a villain from the GOP list...like immigrants:

At his campaign kickoff Thursday, Brownback made a point of hammering the moderate Republicans who voted for the tax increase, accusing them of the stealing from hard-working Kansans. He linked the tax increase to the amount of money the state spends on providing public services to illegal immigrants, citing figures from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center considers extremist.

NEW: I just found this great point by point break down from Brookings of the Brownback debacle. Another "supply side" failure:

1. Tax cuts do not guarantee economic growth. The Kansas experiment is a stunning rebuke of supply-side rhetoric put forth by tax-cut advocates like Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, who promised big economic gains. The Kansas tax cut resulted in no apparent growth effects.

2. Special tax rates for business activity mainly generate more tax-sheltering behavior and less revenue. A recent study found that Kansans found it advantageous to convert labor income into business income for tax purposes, even with a tax differential of less than 5 percentage points.

3. The Kansas experience is consistent with the view that people are more willing to pay higher taxes when they can see the link between tax revenues and the societal benefits that government provides. After experiencing the significant cuts to public spending, Kansans voted to oust some of the most conservative GOP legislators in the 2016 elections. In a May poll in Kansas, a bedrock Republican state, 59 percent of those surveyed preferred to solve the state’s budget problems with either tax increases or a combination of tax increases and spending cuts (rather than just through spending cuts).

The Bottom Line: 

The Brownback tax cuts were one of the cleanest experiments the country has ever had in measuring the effects of tax cuts on economic growth, and it showed that they were a failure. Congress can learn three lessons from this experience.

Walker hands Millionaires +, 77% of Tax Cuts, costing state an estimated $736 million over 5 years, up from low ball $360 million.

If you thought you were happy getting a whole $1-$10 tax cut this year, you won't believe how happy farm and manufacturing businesses are.

The whole point of Scott Walker's supply side statewide agenda is to make tax policy as unfair as possible, on purpose, while maintaining a steady stream of campaign money from business. And as money drains out of the general revenue fund without any offsets, Wisconsin becomes the Mexico of the Midwest. Just the way Republicans want it.

Thankfully, more and more people in the top 1% get to keep most of their money, while everyone else can't keep any of it living paycheck to paycheck:

And the Walker trolls are still happy!

11 taxpayers making more than $35 million to reap $21.5 million from tax credit: The report from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau comes on the heels of a similar report from the liberal Wisconsin Budget Project finding most of the state's Manufacturing and Agriculture Tax Credit this past year went to 77 percent of the total individuals earning more than $1 million.

The tax credit is available to farming and manufacturing companies, but also to individuals who own a stake in companies set up S corporations.

The tax credit was introduced late in the 2011-13 budget process. It was initially projected to cost the state $360 million over the first five years, but the estimate has been revised to $736 million.

A slight miscalculation, but business is happy.