News of the Day

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday sided with Jack Daniel’s in a dispute over a dog toy that parodies its iconic liquor bottle, ruling that a lower court erred when it said the toy was covered by the First Amendment’s free speech protections.

The unanimous opinion written by Justice Elena Kagan allows the liquor maker to revive its trademark lawsuit against VIP Products in lower courts. In the meantime, the “Bad Spaniels Silly Squeaker” toy remains on the market.

At the center of the case is the toy created by VIP Products that is strikingly similar to Jack Daniel’s bottles. The distiller sued the company over the toy claiming it violated federal trademark law, which usually centers around how likely a consumer is to confuse an alleged infringement with something produced by the true owner of the mark.

Though the court’s decision is a win for Jack Daniel’s – which argued that an appeals court made a mistake when it said the toy was “non-commercial” and therefore enjoyed constitutional protection – the justices declined to grant the distiller’s request to completely throw out the test an appeals court used when it ruled in favor of the toy, a move that would have given trademark holders wide latitude to sue companies that parody their marks on consumer goods.

“Today’s opinion is narrow. We do not decide whether the Rogers test is ever appropriate, or how far the ‘noncommercial use’ exclusion goes,” Kagan wrote, adding: “The use of a mark does not count as noncommercial just because it parodies, or otherwise comments on, another’s products.”

“We hold only that it is not appropriate when the accused infringer has used a trademark to designate the source of its own goods – in other words, has used a trademark as a trademark. That kind of use falls within the heartland of trademark law, and does not receive special First Amendment protection,” she said.

A Republican bill to ax a disliked and obscure portion of Wisconsin’s tax code got a public hearing Thursday, with lawmakers hopeful that this attempt will successfully be passed into law after a similar bill was vetoed by Governor Tony Evers in the last legislative session.

At a press conference Thursday, Republican legislative leaders said the personal property tax repeal is part of an agreement on shared revenue they struck Wednesday night with Evers.

The personal property tax has been a part of Wisconsin’s code since the state’s founding. While it initially covered all household and business property, the tax has been whittled away over the past 175 years. The application to households fell off the tax rolls with the introduction of the state income tax in 1911 and business exemptions have been continually added over the last century.

In 1974, manufacturing machinery and equipment were removed from the tax and in 1999, computers and electronic business equipment were exempted.

Under current law, only furniture, watercraft and a few other items remain covered by the tax while most of Wisconsin’s neighboring states have already fully repealed their own versions of the tax.

Republican lawmakers said at the hearing that the tax adds an onerous and time-consuming administrative task to small business owners who remain liable for paying the tax, which often isn’t that high for individual taxpayers, and for the municipal government staff responsible for assessing and collecting the taxes.

“To small business it sometimes can be more of a time strain than financial strain, the time to catalog your inventory or personal property, so furnishings, fixtures, and the list goes on,” Sen. Dan Knodl (R-Germantown) said. “But that time and effort is very time-consuming, and probably costs more than the final check that you’re writing to the local community or you’re paying your accountant to do work. You’re paying more money out that way than you are in the actual tax bill. The benefits to the local government, and I have met with all my local governments over the years, they’re to the point where, ‘please just make our compliance efforts go away, and we’d be thrilled just to take the check from the state and move along with our business.’”

The Wisconsin Assembly passed a package of bills Wednesday designed to help improve the system of issuing professional licenses to everyone from tattoo artists to doctors and nurses that has been plagued with delays since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

The state Department of Safety and Professional Services, which processes license applications, objects to doubling the length of a licensing, telling lawmakers in submitted testimony in May that it could lead to “abuse that would threaten public safety.”

In particular, the department’s lobbyist Mike Tierney warned, license holders who have serious issues could continue to work for years before arrests or convictions were revealed.

But the Wisconsin Hospitals Association, one of several health care organizations that supports the change, told lawmakers that it would ease the renewal burden on license holders, give the state more flexibility and reduce workload by allowing it to stagger renewal dates.

Other bills that were passed would allow those seeking a business license, such as accountants, to work immediately in Wisconsin if they have a license in good standing from another state. A 2021 law allowed for health care professionals from another state to begin working in Wisconsin while their Wisconsin applications were pending.

Another proposal would require the licensing department to update the processing time on its website monthly and post information about whether other states’ credentials for health care professions would qualify a person to obtain a reciprocal health care credential in Wisconsin.

Other measures would require the department to provide more processing data to the Legislature and another would streamline the required review of an applicant’s criminal history, with the goal of speeding up the process.

The bills now head to the Senate, which Republicans also control. Evers would have to sign them into law before they could take effect.

Leaders at the state Department of Safety and Professional Services have said applications are being processed about twice as quickly now as they were in 2021, when wait times were as long as 80 days.

Governor Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Department of Tourism Secretary Anne Sayers announced a record-breaking year in 2022 for Wisconsin’s tourism industry. The total economic impact was $23.7 billion. The previous record was set in 2019 with $22.2 billion.

Last year, tourism helped with 174,000 jobs in various counties and produced $1.5 billion in state and local tax revenue. 2022 brought in 111.1 million visits to Wisconsin. Of those visits, 45.4 million were overnight, a 13.8 percent increase from 2021.

“Tourism is vital to the economic health of local communities, businesses, and workers across our state, and I’m proud of our work to support this critical industry and its success over these past few years,” Governor Evers said. “We must continue to make key investments in Wisconsin tourism to ensure it continues to be a key part of our economy for generations.”

“Aided by strategic marketing, Wisconsin convinced more visitors to stay the night so they could add more activities to their itinerary, delivering a deeper economic impact,” Secretary Sayers said. “I congratulate the entire industry on an incredible record-breaking year.”

A bit more than a year into the covid-19 pandemic, management professor Anthony Klotz spoke to Bloomberg News and warned of a coming “Great Resignation.” For a time, it looked like an excellent call.

During the initial spread of Covid, switching jobs was rare. But coming out of the pandemic, with employers and households still flush with cash, the job market recovered at a record pace. Better jobs (and better-paying jobs) were created, workers took those jobs, and the overall employment situation in the U.S. improved.

As a result, the quits rate in the US, which is the percentage of employed people voluntarily leaving their jobs, rose to a record high in November 2021, according to a data series that started in December 2000. But it never got above 3%, which means the quits rate in fact wasn’t particularly great. According to research from the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, there have been six other episodes in the 20th century where workers switched jobs at similar rates.

Now the rate is even less great. As of April 2023, it has fallen to 2.4%, in line with the quits rate that existed in 2019.

Republicans on the Legislature’s budget committee voted for a $2.4 billion capital budget Thursday, the largest of any state building program in years but was about $1.4 billion smaller than the $3.8 billion capital budget proposed by Governor Evers.

The University of Wisconsin played a major role in both Evers’ building plan and the one passed by Republicans. But while Evers’ budget called for $1.8 billion in UW building projects, Republicans approved $950 million, or about half. They included:

• $285 million for a Camp Randall Sports Center replacement at the UW-Madison.
• $231 million for a UW-Eau Claire science building.
• $58 million for residence halls at the UW-Oshkosh.
• $139 million for renovations to the UW-Stout’s Heritage Hall

Other projects funded by Republicans include $160 million for a new Wisconsin Historical Society Museum and almost $11 million for upgrades to the Marquette University School of Dentistry. Those projects, like others approved Thursday, will be built with a combination of state funding and private gifts.

Typically when the state funds building projects, it issues bonds, or borrows. But the motion Republicans passed Thursday would pay for many of the projects in cash. Overall, Republicans would set aside $1.2 billion in state funding for buildings. They’d also spend another $400 million to pay down old debt.

The building projects approved Thursday still need to clear the full Legislature before they’re sent to the governor’s desk.

In a dispute about the pressure that organized labor can exert during a strike, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday against unionized drivers who walked off the job with their trucks full of wet concrete.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, said the union failed to take reasonable precautions to protect the company’s concrete when the drivers went on strike. Barrett wrote that the drivers for Washington state-based Glacier Northwest quit work suddenly, putting the company’s property in “foreseeable and imminent danger.”

“The Union’s actions not only resulted in the destruction of all the concrete Glacier had prepared that day; they also posed a risk of foreseeable, aggravated, and imminent harm to Glacier’s trucks,” Barrett wrote in a decision joined by four other justices. Three more justices agreed with the outcome in the case but did not join Barrett’s opinion.

This case stemmed from contract negotiations in 2017 between Glacier Northwest and the local Teamsters union, representing the drivers. When negotiations broke down, the union called for a strike. Drivers walked off the job while their trucks were full of concrete, which must be used quickly and can damage the trucks if it’s not.

Glacier says the union timed the strike to create chaos and inflict damage. Glacier not only had to dump the concrete but also pay for the wasted concrete to be broken up and hauled away. The company sued the union in state court for intentionally damaging its property; the lawsuit was initially dismissed.

The question for the Supreme Court was about how the case should proceed. Glacier said its lawsuit in state court should not have been dismissed at the outset. The union said Glacier’s lawsuit should only be allowed to go forward in state court if the federal National Labor Relations Board first found that the union’s actions were not protected by federal law.

Barrett wrote that because the union did not take reasonable precautions to protect Glacier’s property, the trial court was wrong to think federal law required dismissing the lawsuit. By “reporting for duty and pretending as if they would deliver the concrete, the drivers prompted the creation of the perishable product. Then, they waited to walk off the job until the concrete was mixed and poured in the trucks,” Barrett wrote.

The Mortgage Bankers Association’s index of mortgage applications fell 4.6% last week to the lowest level since February, according to new data published Wednesday.

“Mortgage applications declined almost five percent last week as borrowers remained sensitive to higher rates,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s deputy chief economist. “Since rates have been so volatile and for-sale inventory still scarce, we have yet to see sustained growth in purchase applications.”

Demand for refinancing also continued to plunge last week, sliding another 5%, according to the survey. Compared with the same time last year, refinance applications are down more than 40%.

The interest rate-sensitive housing market has cooled rapidly in the wake of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive tightening campaign. Policymakers already lifted the benchmark federal funds rate 10 consecutive times and have opened the door to another increase at their June meeting following a slew of stronger-than-expected economic data.

For months, higher mortgage rates have dampened consumer demand and brought down home prices. As rates have slowly fallen from a peak of 7%, the housing market has shown early signs of stirring back to life. However, the return to lower mortgage rates has not been smooth. In fact, rates moved significantly higher to start the week, according to a separate MBA survey, with rates surging to 6.91%.

The nation’s credit card debt stands at $986 billion, according to the Federal Reserve. The figure has climbed by $250 billion in two years.

Just two years ago, the national credit card narrative seemed headed in the opposite direction. Card balances declined from about $850 billion at the start of 2020 to less than $750 billion in the spring of 2021, a time of pandemic penny-pinching and federal stimulus-payment largesse.

Credit card debt rose by $86 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022, the largest increase on record.

The average credit card interest rate stands at 20.92 percent. Just last spring, the average card rate was 16.65 percent.

Credit card customers fall in two distinct camps: those who pay off their balance every month, and those who do not. For consumers who never carry a balance, the interest rate doesn’t really matter, because they aren’t paying it. But that group is shrinking. Forty-six percent of cardholders carry debt from month to month, up from 39 percent a year ago, Bankrate reports.

Credit card balances typically recede in the first months of the year, as consumers leverage holiday guilt, year-end bonus funds and early tax refunds to pay down their cards. This year, that didn’t happen: The national credit card debt remained essentially flat.

And analysts expect it to rise in the months to come.

After several weeks of tense negotiations, President Joe Biden and House Republicans have reached an agreement in principle to address the debt limit and cap spending. The bill text was released on Sunday evening.

Here’s what we know about the deal, based on the bill text, White House sources and information circulated by House Republicans.

Addresses the debt ceiling: The agreement would suspend the nation’s $31.4 trillion debt limit through January 1, 2025.

Caps non-defense spending: Under the deal, non-defense spending would remain relatively flat in fiscal 2024 and increase by 1% in fiscal 2025, after certain adjustments to appropriations were made, according to a White House official. After fiscal 2025, there would be no budget caps.

Expands work requirements: The agreement calls for temporarily broadening of work requirements for certain adults receiving food stamps. Currently, childless, able-bodied adults ages 18 to 49 are only able to get food stamps for three months out of every three years unless they are employed at least 20 hours a week or meet other criteria. The agreement would increase the upper limit of the mandate to age 55 in phases, according to the bill text. However, the deal would also expand exemptions for veterans, people who are homeless and former foster youth in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, as food stamps are formally known. And all the changes would end in 2030.

Claw back some Covid-19 relief funds: The deal would rescind roughly $28 billion in unobligated funds from the Covid-19 relief packages that Congress passed to respond to the pandemic, according to the House GOP.

Cut Internal Revenue Service funding: The deal would repurpose $10 billion from fiscal 2024 and another $10 billion from fiscal 2025 appropriations to be used in non-defense areas, according to the White House source. Separately, the agreement would also rescind $1.4 billion in IRS funding from the act, which the GOP describes as the full amount of funds included in the agency’s fiscal 2023 spending plan for non-taxpayer services.

Restart student loan repayments: Under the deal, borrowers would have to begin paying back their student loans at the end of the summer, as the Biden administration has already announced, according to a third source familiar with the debt ceiling talks. The pause has been in effect since the Covid-19 pandemic began.