Forget the tea party. Time to muster a mustard mutiny.
Our federal government is not the only one digging a financial hole all the way to China. Dane County government is also in dire straits and Dane County voters don't like it one bit.
That is the conclusion of a public opinion poll conducted by Strategic Vision LLC for a citizens group, the Dane County Council on Public Affairs.
Three-fifths (59.5%) of the respondents of the survey, released today, are not happy that the Dane County Board of Supervisors raised the county tax levy by 7.9 percent in the last budget. Here are other highlights:
- 55.4% do not want to pay more sales tax to support mass transit for the Regional Transit Authority created by the current County Board. Only 32% approve an increase in the sales tax. (The remainder are dazed and confused.)
- 69% are displeased that the County's total indebtedness has tripled in the last decade to $251 million.
- 66.5% are dissatisfied that the county has lost its Triple-A bond rating, meaning that future borrowing will be more costly because the county is a worse credit risk.
- To bring the budget into line, 41% want the county to stop all conservation land purchases, 43% said reduce such purchases, and 16% said buy more land.
For all the county's financial woes, it amazes me that The Kathleen and her county board gave a low-interest $200,000 loan to the Mustard Museum to that it could relocate to Middleton from Mt. Horeb.
These are the supervisors who voted YES to a 7.9% increase in county taxes: Bayrd, de Felice, DeSmidt, Duranczyk, Erickson, Hendrick, Hesselbein, Hulsey, Kostelic, Levin, Manning, Matano, Opitz, Rusk, Schmidt, Solberg, Stoebig, Stubbs, Vedder, Veldran, Wheeler, and McDonell.
The poll queried 950 likely spring voters, an unusually large sample. Your blogger is a member of DCCPA but had no role in the conduct of the poll. More results at www.danepublicaffairs.org
County Board elections are Tuesday, April 6.
ObamaCare by the numbers
For the record, here are some numbers provided by Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers as relayed by my friends at Wisconsin Club for Growth. The health care takeover will:
- Cost $1.4 trillion by 2020
- Raise taxes $569 billion
- Violate the Obama pledge of no new taxes for any family earning less than $250,000 annually-12 separate times
- Drain $53 billion from Social Security to create the illusion of deficit reduction
- Cut the popular Medicare Advantage program $202 billion
- Subsidize insurance companies to the tune of $436 billion
- Create 16,500 jobs - in the Internal Revenue Service.
Free speech enemies
State Senator Glenn Grothman makes a point that visitors to Stately Blaska Manor know all too well: Our liberal/progressive friends love free speech as long as they agree with it.
Sen. Grothman brings my attention to Senate Bill 523, introduced by leftists Sen. Spencer Coggs of Milwaukee and Madison's own Mark Pocan. Sen.Grothman says:
"It appears on its face that not only (university) chancellors and deans but department heads, members of committees that determine tenure or other employees would be barred from being critical of a union. This bill would go far beyond the National Labor Relations Act by using the word 'discourage' instead of 'coerce' or 'intimidate.'"
Glenn says "Hatred for the free exchange of ideas has always been a priority of the hard Left. Be it the McCain-Feingold prohibitions against political free speech, Tammy Baldwin and Gwen Moore's vote for the "Fairness Doctrine" to shut down talk radio, or the "hate speech" codes which proliferated at American universities in the 1980s and 1990s, the Left is always afraid of people hearing both sides of the story."
Today's profile in courage
This lady could give Obama some calcium supplements. (Thanks, Charlie)