No Runny Eggs

(H/T – Charlie and Aaron, who really belongs on Charlie’s blogroll)

The Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance reports that between 1995 and 2000, despite gaining 4,400 households (their numbers; I come up with a 240,000-person gain using Census Bureau numbers), Wisconsin lost $4.72 billion in household net worth and lost $454.8 million in income. No, that is not per-capita or per-household, that’s the total amount; and no, that was not during either Bush Presidency, that was during what lefties love to call “The Best Damn Economy Ever” in the Clinton Presidency.

During the same time (numbers again courtesy the Census Bureau), the total state and local tax burden in Wisconsin went up $3,545,704,000 (or if you prefer, $3.55 billion), from $9,029,488,000 in 1995 to $12,575,192,000 in 2000. Let’s review: population went up a bit; total net worth went way, way down; total income went way down; and taxes still went way, way up. Of particular note, personal income taxes went up $2,030,363,000 when personal income went down $454,800,000. And we still have gubmint types demanding we spend more and more and more and more money on gubmint?

Revisions/extensions – Dad29 points out that those state taxes went up while Tommy Thompson had an iron grip on the governor’s mansion. ‘Tis why we have a bipartisan Party of Gubmint in Wisconsin

Revisions/extensions – I forgot to mention that this particular version of the Anti-Tabor comes from Terry Musser, a Pubbie member of the Party of Gubmint.

(Major H/T – Dennis York)

Dennis really does do it all, from discussing MMSD’s favorite rainy-season product to the serious. This time, he heads to the serious (at least until the end) and takes on Assembly Joint Resolution 71, which can fairly be described (and is) as the anti-TABOR. It starts out flawed by exempting sewerage districts and the like from the limits on property tax/fee levies (previous year plus inflation in Milwaukee/Racine plus new construction) and the referendum requrirement to bust and reset the limits. Yep, that’s right, MMSD still gets to jack up the property taxes as much as they want so they can keep dumping the brown hostages into the lake.

Then it goes into the horrid by mandating the state spend AT LEAST the amount it did on local aid the previous year plus inflation plus new construction. So much for getting a handle on 60% of state spending (and before long, it will be 70%, then 80%).

There is a one more kicker to the taxpayers’ hindquarters (or will it be the family jewels?); a very-poorly written (from a taxpayer’s perspective, at least) “emergency” exemption to the limits that takes merely a 2/3rds vote by the governing body to invoke – …any expenditure of a local governmental unit that the governing body of the local governmental unit did not anticipate and in an amount that is greater than 10 percent of the amount of the local governmental unit’s fiscal year budget. Allow me to translate; if 2/3rds of your common council/school board/county board/et al can create a mid-year financial “crisis”, up go the taxes, and more importantly, the ceiling for the following year’s taxes and the floor for the following year’s state spending on local government.

The WMF vulnerability (documented by Dad29 here and here) has been patched for Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP SP1/SP2/x64 and Windows 2003 (all versions). If you have any of those systems, run Windows/Microsoft Update immediately, then you may reregister the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer by typing regsvr32 %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll

For those of you with Win98/ME, you’re SOL. Microsoft says that it’s not a “critical” security breach for you. And if you have NT x.x/2000 SP3 or earlier/95/3.x (the vulnerability of the last 2 are by heresay only at this point), you’re REALLY SOL; Microsoft wants your money for the newer OSes.