Congratulations, Wisconsin. Today was a healthy bipartisan spread of stupid decisions that will hurt the state for years to come. First, Governor Scott Walker reaffirmed his decision to turn away thousands of private sector jobs and over a billion dollars in private economic development despite an offer by the Menominee to essentially indemnify the state taxpayers for any possible losses that may result from building the Kenosha casino AND give $220+ million to build a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks.

With that decision, Walker also made it exceedingly difficult to pass any state funding bill to help build a new arena for the Bucks. Many people from outside Milwaukee already opposed taxpayer support for an arena, and now they likely won’t support a dime of my tax dollars going to build an arena in Milwaukee since Walker is turning down over $200 million in private funding for that project. Walker’s decision makes it quite unlikely that Wisconsin will have an NBA team in 36 months and all of that private investment and economic activity will leave the state too.

To cap it off, Mayor Tom Barrett finally got his trolley in Milwaukee, thus obligating the taxpayers to hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer expense for decades to come.

And people wonder why Wisconsin’s economy lags…