Is Scott Walker Diverting Attention Away From The Great Heist Of Wisconsin's Infrastructure To His Corporate Benefcators?

Evil, corrupt Stalinist clown... smiling

Yesterday the Wisconsin Democratic Party filed an ethics complaint with the state Government Accountability Board that alleges Walker repeatedly violated Wisconsin statutes by appearing to request support from Koch in shoring up vulnerable Republicans and by indicating that he would use the threat of layoffs as a political tool.

The complaint focuses on several aspects of the prank call, but I think these two may be the most interesting:

16. Respondent states during the Call that he has the Attorney General's office "looking into" strategies to force the Democratic senators to return. This constitutes a misuse of the independently elected office of the Attorney General for primarily political motivations.

And:

19. Respondent states during the Call that he will send out 5,000-6,000 layoff notices to public sector employees in an attempt to "ratchet up" pressure on the Democratic Senators. This use of threat against, and intimidation of, public sector employees for political purposes constitutes an unfair labor practice in violation of Wis. Stat. Section 111.84.

The complaint also alleges that it was improper for Walker to suggest to Koch that Republicans in swing areas might need shoring up, since this smacks of illegal coordination, though to my mind it isn't clear what he was asking for. It also says that Walker's claim that he "thought about" planting troublemakers in the crowd "constitutes a conspiracy to recklessly endanger public safety," though here too it's not quite clear what Walker really considered doing.

And the media is focused-- when not covering Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan and the royal wedding-- on Walker's battle to dismantle public sector unions in what he falsely claims is an attempt to balance the budget but is, in reality, an attempt to defund the Democratic Party. The battle is destroying Walker's political viability with the general public but is there something even more valuable for him in this? Is the media missing another story in Wisconsin?

Some of the wealthiest-- or at least most ostentatious-- spenders in the world are Russians. How did that happen so fast? These nouveau riche slobs have the capacity-- along with a kind of Russian Mafia-- to buy up whatever takes their fancy anywhere in the world. It seems like only yesterday that the communism had obliterated this kind of extreme wealth. However, when communism fell, corrupt government officials basically sold the country's (i.e.- Russian citizens') wealth off to... a criminal class of soon-to-be multimillionaires and billionaires. The government officials have been well taken care of as well, of course but Russian privatization is hardly a model for good economic policy. It looks, however, that's it's just another aspect of extreme Stalinism being embraced by the radical end of the Republican Party, particularly corporate shill Scott Walker. No bid sales of Wisconsin's infrastructure to... to whom?

Most of the discussion of Gov. Scott Walker's budget proposals has centered on public employee compensation and unions. This is proper, because their impact will be immediate and it will be large.

I wish, however, to draw attention to another proposal in the budget: allowing the sale of state-owned power plants to private companies in a no-bid process. This provision is inconsistent with free market principles.

It may be good for the state to sell off power plants, but doing this without competitive bidding looks more like a favor to special interests than anything else.

On the other hand, it might not be in the interests of Wisconsinites for Walker to sell off their power plants at all. Ellen Dannin takes another look at the Republican Party privatization ideology and its consequences.

States and cities are being told that they can fix their budgets and have money left over by leasing their infrastructure for 50, 75 or even 99 years. It sounds great, even miraculous. But we all need to slow down and do our homework, because the rule "If it sounds too good to be true, it is" still applies, and there are good reasons why state and local governments should not want any part of these deals.

The truth is that, rather than making money on just tolls and fees, private contractors make their money through big tax breaks and by squeezing state and local governments for payments for the life of the contracts.

In fact, tax breaks explain why the deals last generations. One tax break for leases that last longer than the useful life of the infrastructure allows investors to write off their investment in just over a decade. A second tax break lets private companies issue tax-free bonds to finance their deals. While tax-free bonds and tax breaks make it less expensive to finance these deals, the downside is that governments lose tax revenue. Losing tax revenue puts government budgets deeper in the red and worsens problems privatization was supposed to fix.

But that's not all. Infrastructure privatization contracts are full of "gotcha" terms that require state or local governments to pay the private contractors. For example, now when Chicago does street repairs or closes streets for a festival, it must pay the private parking meter contractor for lost meter fares. Those payments put the contractors in a much better position than the government. It gets payments, even though Chicago did not get fares when it had to close streets.

Highway contractors can be entitled to payments if there is an accident on the highway and if the police, fire and emergency crews do not give "appropriate" notice and do not perform their emergency work in a way that is "reasonable under the circumstances." And, given the vagueness of those standards, states and cities may end up paying just to avoid the costs of litigation.

...All of these contract terms put the public safety and well-being last and the investors' profits first. And although infrastructure privatization proponents claim that the deals transfer risk from the public to the contractors, a fair reading of the contract terms shows that this is not the case. State and local governments lose control of their destinies and communities, while giving private investors power over our new dollar democracies.

These problems will persist even when the private contractor does a good job in maintaining the infrastructure and providing good public access to it. But contractors have not always done a good job in keeping their agreements.

Shortly after it took over the Indiana Toll Road, the private contractor put sand-filled barrels in turn-arounds with no notice to the state. State officials begged and pleaded for the barrels to be removed, so police and emergency crews could get to accidents and deal with other public safety problems as quickly as possible. Those pleas fell on deaf ears, while the turn-arounds remained blocked for months.

Or consider the poor people of Auckland, New Zealand. Their government had become enamored of privatization, because they had been told that the private sector always provided better service at lower cost. The private company, Mercury, that bought the electrical service for Auckland decided to save costs by eliminating backup power, by not replacing parts of the system that were years past their normal life, by doing no maintenance, by having no electrical cables in reserve and by terminating its repair crews. When they were terminated, the crews left New Zealand to find work elsewhere. All these decisions were made to increase company profits.

Those decisions may have lowered the company's costs, but at a huge price, most of which it did not bear when the power cables to Auckland's central business district failed. Banks, stock exchanges, restaurants and all functions that depended on electricity were hard hit. Water, sewage and all systems went down and the power outage lasted nearly two months, because it had no repair crews or replacement components on hand.

Auckland's businesses lost millions of dollars. Companies tried to stay open by using generators, office workers climbed stairs in skyscrapers in mid-summer and generator noise and diesel smoke filled downtown. At one point, Auckland was provided power to essential facilities through an electric cable plugged into a large ship in the harbor.

You would think that New Zealand privatization advocates would have rethought their positions after they saw the carnage created by Mercury. But that was not the case. They actually claimed that the problem was caused by not having privatized enough infrastructure. While ludicrous, given what they had experienced, that view is not unique.

Consider, then, that at this very moment, state and local governments are contemplating signing contracts that restrict their rights to inspect infrastructure paid for with public money. Consider that they are agreeing to sign away their ability to protect the public interest and are setting in motion the same sort of disaster that Auckland faced, while the federal government is offering tax breaks to promote privatization.

The Republican legislature is just rubber-stamping all of Walker's slimy dealings without any kind of serious study into the long-term impact on the state. Last month they approved privatization of the Commerce Department’s economic development programs, which will reduce transparency and accountability. Three conservative Democrats went along with Walker: Sens. Tim Cullen (Janesville) and Jim Holperin (Conover) and Assemblyman Mark Radcliffe (Black River Falls). Republicans defeated a series of amendments that Democrats said would make the agency more accountable to taxpayers for how it doles out large incentives to businesses.

A couple nights ago, Rachel Maddow had an interesting look at Walker's privatization jihad: