Thursday, August 13, 2015

Wisconsin Taxpayer Got Fleeced, But Lena Got A Pen

By Jeff Simpson

Today, as we all know, Scot Walker made a guest appearance in Wisconsin, to hand $500 million of our taxpayer dollars to the Milwaukee Bucks


Tomorrow, Scott Walker will stand on a stage at State Fair Park in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and betray virtually every conservative economic principle there is by handing out up to $450 million in taxpayer money to wealthy sports owners to pay for private infrastructure at a time when public infrastructure is crumbling.
The massive sum will go toward the building of a new sports arena for the Milwaukee Bucks basketball franchise, pleasing the team’s billionaire hedge-fund-manager owners, who threatened to move the team if they weren’t given taxpayer tribute. Conservatives in recent years have feigned concern about corporate welfare, and this deal is really the ultimate expression of it: hundreds of millions of dollars from teachers, waitresses, factory workers and shop owners funneled to pay for an aristocrat’s show palace rather than needed public service.
Of all the things desperately wrong with this, perhaps the most salient is the fact that the “old” arena, the BMO Harris Bradley Center, is only 27 years old, inaugurated in 1988. Incredibly, this makes it the 3rd-oldest arena housing a professional basketball franchise, behind only Madison Square Garden in New York and the Oracle Arena in Oakland, both of which have been substantially renovated over the years.
 While many of us are wondering how both parties could sell us out to the tune of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars when we know thatr it brings nothing back in return:


However, despite all of the evidence, and the massive cuts to education Scott Walker and the Republicans have brought us the last five years,  Senator Lena Taylor tells us that is all about to change:

Today, Governor Walker signed the Milwaukee Bucks arena funding bill into law. Milwaukee is one step closer to cranes in the sky, jobs on the ground and more money in the state coffers to fund things like public schools.
 See it only took taxpayers, handing billionaire walker donors, $500 million dollars to be able to eventually fully fund education. 

Who knew? 

While Scott walker was able to cash in our millions by getting campaign donations of a few hundred thousand, Ms. Taylor works considerably cheaper.   All it took for her was Scott Walker giving her a pen. 



Signing for the arena deal! The pen - handed to me by Gov Walker.

It is not all bad news, Ms. Taylor can use the pen, to write an oped next year about all of the millions flowing back into education because she helped approve the Bucks Arena.  



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