Over at Rock Netroots, Lou Kaye’s published a post with observations about Rock County’s politics, entitled, Community Quotes #3. (It’s in the syle of a similar Gazette feature, but thankfully without that newspaper’s ceaseless fronting of white-collar welfare.)
On the Blackhawk Technical College referendum (four-million more annually, forever…), Kaye has three comments that sum it all up, nicely:
On Local Power Players Dishonesty and Deception:
* So typical. How self-serving business groups like Forward Janesville have claimed higher taxes, wages and benefits are a burden on local economic development and then lobby for tax breaks for themselves. But here they are endorsing a local tax hike on everyone else to pay for employee training at a technical college. The keyword: self-serving.* I think members of the business chambers in Beloit including Forward Janesville are completely dishonest for supporting Scott Walker’s budget cuts on schools/technical colleges. Cutting revenue that came from a much larger tax base but now spin around promoting local tax hikes to restore those funding cuts. They’ll use the same strategy to promote raising local taxes for Janesville streets. Lots of people blind to the politics, fall for it every time.
* Never underestimate the power of Forward Janesville, Rock County five-o or their Janesville Gazette media flacks. They’re a big “connected” club with a political agenda and operatives in every part of local government.
It’s funny how in Whitewater some on the Left might think that supporting BHTC is an imperative, but Kaye and others in Rock County (themselves liberals, by the way) see the issue more clearly.
Regardless of Walker or Doyle, etc., in office, here’s one libertarian opposed to a perpetual referendum like this. Republican or Democrat, it’s overreaching, either way.
The referendum is a money-grab pushed by so-called conservatives who have never met public spending for their private interests that they didn’t like. They’re not, in fact, true conservatives at all.
These sort of polices have wrecked the Right in Whitewater, but that won’t stop a few elsewhere from hoping they can dupe their own voters. (See, along these lines, How Conservatives Ruined Conservatism in Whitewater.)