What’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about budget deficits or government spending or even public employee benefits. It’s class war, wherein the big business, conservative Right tries to pit working class Americans against one another so that the super-rich can continue to pilfer our private and public coffers for their own boundless gain. Here are the facts you need to know — and spread:
1. 60% of Wisconsin’s largest corporations pay ZERO taxes
According to the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future, in 2007 60% of corporations in Wisconsin with over $100 million in annual revenues paid zero taxes. None. Zip. Zilch.
2. Raising corporate taxes in Wisconsin to the national average would generate $1 BILLION in revenue
By comparison, Gov. Walker’s union busting bill will “save” a measly $350 million (that is, if you consider lowering the income and security of a core group of tax-paying workers “saving” money…).
3. Cutting taxes on corporations and the rich created state budget crises.
States do not have a spending problem. They have a revenue problem. The recession caused all tax receipts to be lower, but government revenue was artificially suppressed long-before by tax cuts for the big business and the rich pushed through at both the federal and state levels. But with Wall Street tycoons still raking in big bonuses while the rest of us stagger and suffer, anger against big business might reach a boiling point… unless private sector workers can be pitted against public sector workers in a “blame government” charade to diffuse anger from the rightful target.
4. Gov. Walker and the attack on unions are paid for by anti-government Koch brothers
David and Charles Koch, scions of the second largest private corporation in the United States, know how to get a good deal for their dollar. Do you really think the brothers who fund the anti-government, pro-big business Tea Party really give a damn about Wisconsin’s deficit? They are using Wisconsin in their larger play to destroy all unions, further strip all workers of benefits and decent wages, and increase power and profit for a very few, very large corporations like their own. The Koch brothers are among Gov. Walker’s top political contributors.
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9 Responses to Wisconsin: Four Facts You Need To Know
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Who said this?
Public sector collective bargaining rights should never have been allowed to happen. Even the darling of old-time liberalism, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, stated in a letter to Luther Steward, President of the National Federation of Public Employees on August 16, 1937, that . . .
“…meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government.
All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters….
Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of government employees.
Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of pubic employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
. . . This is not an issue of oppression of the middle income and working classe labor force, this is a statement supporting and obvious need for protection of the tax payers, the majority of whom are middle and working class.
Don’t always believe the disinformation provided by public sector union leadership and the media. Think and research for yourselves.
End of story
Silly Sally…Corporate taxation is double-taxation because it’s paid by post-tax dollars of the customers. There should be no Corporate tax at all.
Did you seriously just say that?!?!?!?!? Just how much money do you make that you can afford to pay corporate taxes? And does it phase you at all that they’re raking in millions to billions, paying virtually nothing to the state, and you’re at risk of loosing school teachers, police officers, fire fighters, prison guards, etc….???? It’s because of people like you that there should be psychological tests before someone can vote….(That was sarcasm, people, sarcasm…..)
Bullshit!
They say figures don’t lie, but liars use figures. You say 60% of Wisconsin’s largest corporations pay ZERO taxes but the reference you cite doesn’t say that. It mentions corporations like Microsoft, McDonalds, etc., who advertise in Wisconsin but are incorporated elsewhere and are considered to earn their profits where they are incorporated. Their products are sold by retailers, in the case of Microsoft, and franchisees, in the case of McDonalds, and those companies do pay taxes in Wisconsin. A lot of sleight of hand, but very little honesty in this story.
You are attributing all the good that has been done by industrial unions to public employee unions and that’s not right. Public employees are protected by civil service laws, which don’t exist in the private sector. Public employee unions have monopoly power over their employers…us. I think that if public employee unions exist, then governments should be able to put public services out for bid and the contract should go to the winner.
Sally, you are not very intelligent. There is a huge difference between private corporation unions and public employee unions. No one is saying all unions are all bad, they just aren’t good when the people who are supposed to counter their demands were put in office by them, i.e. no counterweight on the scale.
*yawn*….I see we have representatives from the party of hate…awesome. And I see….again….that when they don’t like what they hear they call the author names and question her intellect…tired of it. Your party is what has ruined this economy with your blowjobs for corporations while scape goating the working class…when will you be happy? when we all work for $10 a day….or are you foolish enough to think you will be one of the lucky ones to sit in your ivory tower and crack the whip? Fools…you are the free loaders…wanting all your services…but not wanting to pay for it. Calling it like I see it…”more more more for me me me”….I believe in the common good…and trust me, it is a better way to live.
Holy CRAP is this right on the money! One corporation is stepping forward and at least offering free advertising to non-profits! That’s called having a brain AND a conscience, people. No two ways about it. We teach our kids better than these elected officials are doing – just because they CAN. I mean, WHO’S GOING TO STOP THEM? . . . We’ll give it a shot, anyway, right? RIGHT???????????!!!!!!! – music teacher in Madtown