Over the weekend, I traveled up to Lincoln County and caught up with Kim Simac, the Republican candidate in the recall election of Democrat Senator Jim Holperin in the 12th Senate District on August 16. Unlike the Democrat challengers to the 6 Republicans up for recall on August 9, Simac is still focused on the “trigger” of all the recalls – the budget repair law and the initial Democrat Senate response of fleeing the state for three weeks.
Simac is running her campaign as though it will decide which party controls the Senate for the next 17 months. Indeed, even before we got to the interview, a small business owner came up, and he and Simac had a rather lengthy discussion of how many barriers Wisconsin puts up to those who create their own paychecks. During that, he showed her (and me) all the licenses he has to maintain to be in business.
We finally got to the interview, which you can listen to by clicking here.
I’ll expand a bit on the taxes issue. Due to the nature of the Simacs’ businesses, much of their income arrives between spring and fall. With respect to property taxes, that means they avail themselves of the installment plan Vilas County and the town of Lincoln offer. With respect to income, as both personal and business income are reported on the same individual income tax forms, when money gets reinvested or there just isn’t that much money coming in, that means there isn’t a tax liability.
There is one more item from a mailer put out by “We Are Wisconsin”. I had thought that it would be nigh impossible to take 140 characters out of context, but that union front group managed to do it. Let’s review the entire tweet (with the part “We Are Wisconsin” chose to take in italics, though they did correct the typo in the original):
Stop the fraud and fix Medicare first! If we cannot do that then why should we invest more into a corrupt, loosing venture?
News flash – Medicare Part A, the Hospital Insurance part, is burning through its “Trust Fund” at a rate that puts exhaustion by 2024, or probably earlier if one believes the chief actuary. In 2010, CBS pegged Medicare fraud at $60 billion per year and termed it “…one of, if not the most profitable, crimes in America.”
