One of the most absurd aspects of Scott Walker's failed job growth strategy is to throw huge sums of money at Illinois bordertown companies to move a mile or two up the street to Wisconsin. The latest example is Gurnee, Illinois manufacturer Kenall moving three miles north to Kenosha.

These types of moves look great in a photo-op, but they do nothing for the Wisconsin economy and won't add a single job. Why? Because the same workers that worked in the Gurnee, Illinois location will be employed when they move three miles north to Kenosha.

The bottomline is if you currently live in Kenosha stateline area and are without a job, this move will do nothing to help your job prospects. The stateline area you reside-in had Kenall Manufacturing yesterday and it will have it tommorrow, only in a new location. The only thing that will change is that Kenall manufucturing will get at least a million dollars for moving a few miles north.

Here's the kicker, though: Because Wisconsin and Illinois have a tax reciprocity agreement, all income earned by an Illinois resident in Wisconsin is paid to Illinios (and vice versa), so nothing is gained income tax-wise from moving businesses a few miles north. At the same time, however, thanks to the new corporate tax scheme set-up by Walker, Kenall will pay next to nothing in taxes, which overall means that Walker has done nothing for the stateline area, except take tax money out of schools and other public works and give it to a corporation.

Gov. Scott Walker blew through $160,000 of state taxpayer money while flying on state-owned planes in the first six months of this year.
That’s about $100,000 more than he’d spent in the first six months of 2011, when he was flying around the state trying to convince Wisconsinites of the merits of his controversial collective bargaining bill. Legitimate taxpayer funded expenditures for travel on state business is, of course, part of the job, which including promoting legislation, but when these trips get scheduled around campaign appearances, it begins to cause some serious concerns.

According to documents provided by the state Department of Administration in response to the Shepherd’s open records requests, Walker has spent $183,839.16 on his travels from Jan. 1 to July 30, 2013.

That amount doesn’t include his state-funded travels on commercial airlines or the expenses incurred during his April trade mission trip to China. Nor does it include the expenses he and his staff are racking up during their visit to Tokyo this week.

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According to analysis of Walker’s state plane usage, his photo ops at state manufacturers are often held with his campaign donors. And there are many of them, since, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign’s campaign finance database, those in the manufacturing and distributing industry have contributed $3.5 million to Walker since 1993.