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Who would Michels’ flat tax plan benefit?
Republican candidate for governor, Tim Michels has proposed a “flat tax” for Wisconsin if he’s elected. When pressed for details, his only answer has been that after the election he’s “going to sit down with all the smart tax people,” and “figure out how low we can get the tax…” Fortunately the smart people at […]
Don’t buy Ron Johnson’s claims on Social Security
Sen. Ron Johnson is too slick for Wisconsin’s good. This August he proposed moving Social Security Insurance (SSI) into the federal government’s discretionary budget. He claims this will help improve it. Here’s what it really means: Congress would have to authorize Social Security spending and its annual automatic cost-of-living increases each and every year! Every […]
When government and colleges come up short in meeting student needs, faculty unions step up
Where can students turn for help with basic survival needs when their colleges and government programs fail them in a crisis? At a growing number of campuses, students are getting aid from the same people they turn to for classroom help: their professors. Halima is a Somalia-born dental technician student at Milwaukee Area Technical College […]
Inflation boogeyman scares only the extremely wealthy
The inflation fear-mongers are at it again. In a futile attempt to discredit President Joe Biden’s extraordinarily popular American Rescue Plan (economic recovery) and American Jobs Act (infrastructure) the usual Republican and neo-liberal suspects are once again raising the boogeyman of inflation. Responding to Biden’s proposals, Republican Sens. Ron Johnson, Charles Grassley and John Thune […]
Milwaukee’s 1969 strike offers lessons for rebuilding today’s union movement
On the tenth anniversary of one of the darkest days in Wisconsin history — the introduction and subsequent passage of Act 10 — it’s important to recognize that unions in the past have grown and even triumphed under similar conditions that former-Gov. Scott Walker, Speaker Robin Vos and now-Congressman Scott Fitzgerald and their co-conspirators imposed […]
Briggs & Stratton’s demise: greed, mismanagement, blaming others
Just days before filing for bankruptcy in July, Milwaukee’s Briggs & Stratton Corp., at one time the largest producer of small engines in the world and employer to 11,000 union production workers making a solid, middle-class living, handed its top executives $5 million in bonuses, calling them “retention awards.” In mid-September a federal bankruptcy court […]