No Runny Eggs

The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.

Archive for January 11th, 2007

Speaking of dying “reform”, this time federal

by @ 21:18. Filed under Politics - National.

(H/T – Slublog)

You might remember that one of San Fran Nan’s goals of her 100 Hours gimick was to end earmarks as we know them by forcing disclosure of who dumped the earmark in. It actually is one thing I can cheer out of the Rat-infested House.

However, I have some bad news. Much like the every-other-year dance of pay increases for Congress, it was all a sham. It seems our “brave” new leaders in the Senate, Dick Turbin, Dingy Harry Reid, and Ted “The Swimmer” Kennedy, don’t want to kill earmarks in the Senate. While they did not manage to table the attempt by Jim DeMint (R-SC) to adopt the House language on earmarks instead of a competing definition that would exempt 95% of the earmarks (vote was 51-45, more on that in a moment), the Swimmer objected to unanimous consent, allowing Turbin and Dingy Harry to keep on twisting arms to try to keep the pork alive.

So, who voted how? It was close to party-line, with most of the Pubbies jumping onto the reform wagon a bit late and most of the ‘Rats clinging to the pork like a liferaft. Beyond the three that didn’t vote (Johnson, Brownback and Inouye), the ones that jumped ship were:

  • ‘Rats who voted to not table the amendment – Cantwell, Feingold (shock), Harkin, Kerry (who probably will take the opportunity to say he voted for it before he voted against it), Landrieu, Lieberman, Nelson, Obama (who, if he didn’t mark himself for an extended stay at Ft. Marcy Park before, just did now), Tester and Webb.
  • RepubicRats who are just too damn stupid – Bennett, Bunning, Domenici, Hatch, Cave-A-Lott (proving me right he wasn’t worthy to return to leadership), Smith and Voinovich.

The final votes are expected next week.

Ethics? We don’t need no steenkin’ Ethics Board!

by @ 19:42. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

It’s not often that I give any credit to state Sen. Mike Ellis (RINO-Neenah), but I have to this time. According to JSOnline’s PoliticsWatch, he found a possibly-fatal flaw in the plan to replace the Ethics and Elections Boards with a newly-constituted Government Accountability Board. In Ellis’ jealous eyes (jealous because his plan at “reform” got shot down last year and will never see the light of day), the requirement that those that serve on that GAB cannot run for office within 1 year of leaving that board is “patently unconstitutional”, as he seems to see a near-absolute constitutional right to run for office. I’ll leave that to the likes of Rick Esenberg and Jeff Wagner to comment intelligently on whether that could be a legitimate concern or just another one of Ellis’ stunts.

Worse, there is an unusual clause in the bill that not only requires the entire package to be made void if any portion is ruled unconstitutional, but that the Ethics and Election Boards remain defunct. Usually, lawmakers include “severability” clauses to bills that expressly state if a portion is ruled unconstitutional, the remainder remains in force.

Either way, Craps wins. Either he gets a board where he picked every last member to replace one board where he has effective control of half the members (one directly, the other 3 through his party apparatus, and a tie-breaking 5th picked by the überliberal Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson) and another where he would have full control before 2010, or he has nobody other than an attorney general who saw nothing wrong at the governor’s mansion while US Attorney for western Wisconsin to worry about at the state level.

New press secretary for the Milk Carton

by @ 8:37. Filed under Miscellaneous.

There is only one man who can spin the fact that 11,152 calls to police were made from Milwaukee Public School system schools last school year into a “non-crisis”. Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present the new press secretary for Milwaukee’s Mayor, Tom “Milk Carton” Barrett, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, who has a world-exclusive quote on the news of the day from MPS –


“There is no crisis here. Those 60 calls per day
to the Milwaukee Police Department are really
misdirected calls to Domino’s Pizza.”

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