{"id":17387,"date":"2011-01-14T07:30:12","date_gmt":"2011-01-14T13:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=17387"},"modified":"2011-09-01T07:37:08","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T12:37:08","slug":"on-wisconsin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=17387","title":{"rendered":"On Wisconsin!"},"content":{"rendered":"

For years, South Dakota’s been pilfing \u00a0jobs from high-tax Minnesota for years, in a campaign that features radio ads and billboards around the Twin Cities comparing the states’ various, very different tax philosophies.<\/p>\n

It looks like we’ll be seeing more of these campaigns. \u00a0John Edwards was right – there are Two Americas. \u00a0One of them is the states that’ll deal with budget deficits by cutting their spending. \u00a0The other will do it by raising taxes.<\/p>\n

Wisconsin is in the first America. Illinois – which just passed a series of tax hikes that have Genghis Khan’s ghost coming back from the great beyond to tell the Illinois legislature “look, subjects can only pay so much tribute…”<\/p>\n

Kim Strassel notes the contrast<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Illinois this week earned the honor of becoming the first state in 2011 to sock it to taxpayers, passing a tax hike the size of Lake Michigan. Citizens cried out, legislators deflected, but the most interesting response came from neighboring Wisconsin, where newly elected GOP Gov. Scott Walker had three words for Illinois businesses: “Escape to Wisconsin.”<\/p>\n

Across the country, dozens of new governors are taking office, fine-tuning state-of-the-state addresses, polishing budgets. With each event we are seeing a growing national divide.<\/p>\n

On one side are wide swathes of the country that this past midterm elected reformers intent on slashing spending and reviving growth. On the other are the holdout pockets\u2014Illinois, California, Massachusetts, Connecticut\u2014drifting further into the abyss of tax and spend. The chasm has huge implications, not just for local and regional politics but for Washington.<\/p>\n

Mr. Walker is painting that gulf as big as the Grand Canyon, this week blitzing the Chicago media markets to let suffering Illinois businesses know that while their governor, Pat Quinn, levies a 50% increase in corporate income taxes, Wisconsin is working to enact the total elimination of corporate income taxes for two years for firms that migrate. The “Escape to Wisconsin” line comes from an old tourism campaign, but Mr. Walker thinks it sums up the business choice perfectly. “We’re going to send out that line to every employer in the state of Illinois,” he tells me<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Speaking of which – Governor Dayton announced he’ll have a budget ready by February 15. \u00a0Remember – the Governor has told the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce that business in the state is “undertaxed”. \u00a0If his “team” does the same job it did over the summer<\/a>, it’s going to be a long winter for the Administration.<\/p>\n

(Perhaps he’ll call his critics “anti-gay”, like he did during the campaign…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For years, South Dakota’s been pilfing \u00a0jobs from high-tax Minnesota for years, in a campaign that features radio ads and billboards around the Twin Cities comparing the states’ various, very different tax philosophies. It looks like we’ll be seeing more of these campaigns. \u00a0John Edwards was right – there are Two Americas. \u00a0One of them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[144,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-governor","category-minnesota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17387"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17393,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17387\/revisions\/17393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}