A migration of facts

Republican Senator Ted Kanavas is taking some pretty big liberties in his press release on the Estate Tax. He tries to claim that the reason people are leaving the state to retire is because of the Estate Tax.

In it you'll find:

State Senator Ted Kanavas (R-Brookfield) renewed his call to end the state's death tax after reading excerpts from a Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance report. The report shows that hundreds of thousands of people moved out of the state of Wisconsin in the five years prior to the 2000 Census. "For years I have been working to change our tax climate..."

Maybe he should have read the whole thing. According to the report, he has to change Wisconsin's actual climate to get them to stay. We could be tax free and not compete with Florida and Arizona. It's just never going to be sunny and 70 degrees here in the winter and that is the main reason retirees are leaving.

The estate tax only affects the wealthiest people in America these days. With the Bush Administration hard at work cutting taxes for these folks, our state really doesn't need to make it a priority too.

Senator Kanavas also fails to mentioned the other big group of people mentioned in the report that the state is losing. Wisconsin is losing 20-29 year-olds as they flee to states that do not have state legislatorsrs trying to squash the high-paying biotech fields with regulations.