A Democrat implosion

It’s been an eventful week and one Democrats may wish to forget. Union-financed advertising for Kathleen Falk’s gubernatorial campaign has disappeared, identifying the unions’ chosen and wholly-owned candidate as a sure loser and exposing the unions’ dwindling influence.

Could anything make matters worse for Democrats? Yes, and it’s already happened.  Moody’s Investors Services last week downgraded the City of Milwaukee’s bond rating.

That would be the same City of Milwaukee administered by Tom Barrett, the Democrat’s only viable candidate to oppose Governor Walker. And that would be the same Governor Walker praised last year by Moody’s for budget reforms that reinforce the State of Wisconsin’s positive credit rating. Nice contrast.

Alert readers will also remember Moody’s downgraded the State of Illinois’ bond rating in February, after Democrat Governor Pat Quinn chose tax increases to address public pension and benefit issues far worse than those Walker has confronted in Wisconsin.

This matters because a poor bond rating subjects taxpayers to higher interest rates on government borrowing. Barrett and Walker are taking Milwaukee and Wisconsin in opposite directions, and Barrett’s is a downward spiral. It also matters because Barrett has pledged to follow Quinn’s lead by raising taxes on corporations and homeowners if elected Governor in June.

You don’t get a Moody’s downgrade without earning it, and we can’t think of a better reason to doubt a mayor’s fiscal smarts than his insistence on spending over $100 million on a two mile trolley line hardly anyone will see.   Businesses will be ruined.

All told, a valuable week for differentiating between Barrett and Walker.

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