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 July 6th, 2007

Blog reconstruction continues into July

by @ 17:34. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Now it’s Wiggy’s turn to put his blog under the knife. I like how he integrated HaloScan directly into the posts. Now if he would just get off of Blogger like everybody else,….

Friday videos – the return

by @ 15:55. Filed under Miscellaneous.

I’m not photogenic (or patient), so don’t look for me to do what these talented folks do with the camera.

Item #1 – Uncle Jimbo explores the “mind” of a John Kerry-in-training Truther. As UJ says, “But don’t doubt it for a second. This kid is crazy as a shithouse rat.”

Item #2 – This week’s Vent, with Bryan filling in for Michelle (who did an admirable job filling in for Bill O’Reilly despite sabotage from the producers), takes out NBC on the Interceptor-v-Dragon Skin issue. In case you forgot, NBC rigged a Chevy pickup to blow up to play up the fact that those trucks had saddlebag gas tanks 15 years ago.

Item #3 – This week’s HamNation gets the Silky Pony treatment. Just how high-maintenance is John Edwards that getting everything done at DC’s premier salon for political celebrities doesn’t match his most-expensive haircut? (Revision/extension – 5:15 pm 7/6/2007) For those of you who can’t stand AARP, there is the YouTube version of this week’s HamNation.

Yahoo is hard down – Update – back up

by @ 8:48. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Their search, news, their free pages, mail, and database servers are all dead. My old domain is still working, though the redirect is not because it is database-based.

Revisions/extensions (8:58 am 7/6/2007) – They’re back up (for the most part). Mail’s still dead.

Further revisions/extensions (9:00 am 7/6/2007) – Back down. Somebody send a wakeup call to the left coast.

Hopefully the last one (9:20 am 7/6/2007) – Back up. Kick ’em when they’re up. Kick ’em when they’re down. Kick ’em when they’re up. Kick ’em all around.

WisTAXsin – behind the numbers

by @ 8:33. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin, Taxes.

I’m a bit late to this party, but the Tax Foundation ran some interesting numbers on just the $15.2 billion-in-FY-2009 tax increase. I don’t particularily like the first chart they produced that had the tax increase representing 50% of the FY-2009 general fund revenue because it understates the actual increase. They also ignored the $1.6 billion increase in the rest of the taxes. Let’s redo that chart of top percentage tax increases between 2000 and 2006 (plus Wisconsin) to reflect the percentage increase and both the total tax increase passed by the state Senate and the portion that isn’t going to CubaCare:

(N/A) – Wisconsin proposes an increase in taxes by 110.5% in 2009 with the full monty tax increase
#1 – Nevada increased taxes by 16.4% in 2004
#2 – New Hampshire increased taxes by 15.7% in 2000
#3 – Tennessee increased taxes by 13.3% in 2003
#4 – Nevada increased taxes (again) by 11.6% in 2005 (making for a 29.9% increase from 2003 to 2005)
#5 – Indiana increased taxes by 11.1% in 2003
(N/A) – Wisconsin proposes an increase in taxes by 10.5% in 2009 with CubaCare taken out (essentially the Doyle increase)
#6 – Idaho increased taxes 9.7% in 2004
#7 – New Hampshire increased taxes by 8.1% in 2001 (making for a 25.1% increase from 1999 to 2001)
#8 – Oregon increased taxes by 8.1% in 2004
#9 – New York increased taxes by 6.6% in 2004
#10 – Ohio increased taxes by 6.5% in 2004

It gets worse. Again, the Tax Foundation neglected to take the Doyle increase into consideration when they considered the increase as a percentage of the gross state product, so let’s do that:
(N/A) – Wisconsin proposes a tax increase equal to 6.632% of the GSP in 2009 with the full monty increase
(N/A) – Wisconsin proposes a tax increase equal to 0.632% of the GSP in 2009 with just the Doyle increases
The previous #1 – Indiana passed a tax increase equal to 0.446% of the GSP in 2003

You read that one right kids. Even if you took out CubaCare, Wisconsin would still have the largest tax increase as a percentage of the economy in the recent history of the country. Specifically, it would be 42% larger than the next-largest tax increase as a percentage of the state’s economy. Keep in mind that is just the increase to the state.

But wait, it gets EVEN WORSE! The Tax Foundation went and calculated what the total state-and-local tax burden would have been if we had these tax increases this year. While they assumed that both the $15.2 billion for CubaCare and the additional $1.6 billion would have been applied in full this year, I’ll assume a 3.3% annual inflation for the 2-year difference. Let’s run the 2007 state-and-local tax burden as a percentage of income chart again:

(N/A) – Average federal take 21.7%
(N/A) – Federal take from Wisconsin taxpayers 20.0%
(N/A) – Wisconsin 19.8% with the full-monty increase (increase adjusted downward for inflation)
#1 – Vermont 14.1%
#2 – Maine 14.0%
#3 – New York 13.8%
(N/A) – Wisconsin 13.0% with just the Doyle increase (increase adjusted downward for inflation)
#4 – Rhode Island 12.7%
#5 – Ohio 12.4%
#6 – Hawaii 12.4%
#7 – Wisconsin 12.3% (current)

Do note that this does not include either any out-of-state tax increases or any local tax increases in Wisconsin. If CubaCare and the rest of the tax increases pass intact, we’ll be paying nearly as much to Uncle Craps as we do Uncle Sam. That hasn’t happened since FDR rolled in with the SocSecurity Ponzi scheme. Even if we “just” get Doyle’s increases, we’re back within striking distance of #1.

Congratulations, voters. Congratulations, Dale Schultz and Mary Panzer. Thanks to your stupidity, we’re on our way to doing something we never have done; be the most-heavily-taxed state in the nation.

Revisions/extensions (4:42 pm 7/6/2007) – corrected a typo.

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