Holding The Line On Taxes And Responsibilities

by capper

Walker is so very proud of his debatable claim on holding the line on taxes. Of course he's proud of it, as that it is the only thing he can claim, without being laughed out of the room. In fact, he is so proud that he has a new commercial touting that claim, showing that he is the reason Miller Brewing would stay in Milwaukee. Unfortunately for Walker, Miller has most recently indicated that they are still going to leave.

But what cost do we, the taxpayers really pay, for his holding the line on taxes?

I have pointed out previously that the transit system is on the verge of going belly up and that the parks look like brownfields, especially if you happen to live in the wrong neighborhood.

We have also seen, via Gretchen Schuldt, that Walker is shifting the cost on to the City of Milwaukee taxpayers to do county work, like shoveling out bus shelters.

In this morning's paper, we see it's just not the City of Milwaukee that Walker is giving the shaft to. He is screwing over all of the suburbs as well. The paper reports that due to Walker's short-sightedness, there aren't enough psychiatric beds in the County to meet demand. This forces the police, who are called on to deal with incidents in which people are having a psychotic episode, and are in danger of hurting themselves and/or others, to have to provide an officer or officers to watch over these people to ensure safety, while they wait for a bed to open up. This is costing the suburbs a lot of money.

I won't kid you and say that psychiatric care is cheap. It can be very expensive. You have to have social workers, nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists and all sorts of other support staff. And psychiatric medications are very expensive, and there often is not a generic alternative to help allay the costs. But as I have also pointed out here, that having people going untreated for mental illnesses and/or alcohol and drug addictions can have much higher costs, in more ways than just money, than any moderate tax increase would have.

It's not that Walker is necessarily anti-tax, it's just that he is against taking on the responsibility of doing the right thing, or doing his job.