Yarrow, the sturdy plant

Yesterday, we featured the Moss Roses (Portulaca grandiflora ) which were bordered by the Yarrow (Achillea spp.) Today, we've got another Yarrow to show you...

...only this Yarrow is yellow.

It's a sturdy plant that doesn't demand a lot of attention. It quietly does it's job of looking pretty at 3' to 4' high.

Not so sturdy is the constant drumbeat from conservative talk radio pounding away that we need to cut more spending because we live in a Tax Hell.

Milwaukee Magazine's Bruce Murphy takes the heat out of that argument:

"On May 27, the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance did a new report showing Wisconsin dropped out of the ranks of the 10 highest-taxed states for the first time in more than 25 years. Indeed, going all the way back to 1963, when the state first adopted a sales tax, Wisconsin has ranked in the top 10 every year except 1980 and 1968.

As recently as 1999, when Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson was near the end of his long tenure, Wisconsin ranked as the third-highest taxed state. Today, Wisconsin has dropped to 11th-highest. That’s quite a change...

...As to whether Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle deserves any credit, Republicans could certainly argue the GOP-led Assembly has helped forge compromises with Doyle that kept spending lower. But it always gets tricky as to who gets the most credit. Some time ago, I had an off-the-record conversation with a conservative GOP legislator who said he considered Doyle more fiscally conservative than most Republican lawmakers. I’m not sure I buy that, but certainly Doyle hasn’t spent money and added state employees like GOP empire builder Tommy Thompson.

Going back 40 years, every governor, including Republicans Warren Knowles, Lee Dreyfus, Thompson and Scott McCallum, and Democrats Pat Lucey, Marty Schreiber and Tony Earl, left office with the state ranked as one of the top 10 highest-taxed states. So doesn’t it seem newsworthy that we dropped out of the top 10 under Doyle? If you’re going to argue the rankings are important, then you have to report them consistently.

As for me, I think they’re misleading. The fact is that Wisconsin taxes more because its fees for roads (no tolls), university tuition (much lower) and other fees are lower than in other states. We also have to make up for the fact that we get less federal funding than other states.

A true measure of how spendthrift the state is comes from relative spending levels. And the latest Taxpayers Alliance study shows the state ranked 22nd in total state/local spending as a percentage of state personal income, just 5 percent above the national average. No doubt we could still improve, but this hardly justifies the charge that Wisconsin is a Tax Hell."

With our infrastructure crumbling, our school classroom size soaring, and our parks withering on the vine, a little financial loving could sure go a long way in raising the "livability index."