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 February 18th, 2009

Freezing Blog Drizzle Advisory expired

by @ 21:38. Filed under The Blog.

This is the Emergency Blogging System. The Freezing Blog Drizzle Advisory that had been in effect for No Runny Eggs has been allowed to expire. The steam that steveegg had has run out.

We now return you to your regularily scheduled schedule of posting.

$1,941 – CORRECTION – $194

by @ 19:06. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin, Taxes.

That is the net per-capita annual tax increase in Jim Doyle’s Spendulus budget. Christian Schneider and the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute broke down all the tax changes, though I believe they grossly understated the oil tax.

Bonus item – give or take a few million, the $2,185,639,000 represents essentially the entire “structural” deficit portion of the $5,700,000,000 hole Doyle created for himself at the beginning of the year, with the remainder being previously-planned increases in spending.

Revisions/extensions (7:20 pm 2/18/2009) – Somewhere in the bloated reader, I read that the Doyle Spendulus budget still has an over-$2 billion structural deficit pushed over to the middle of 2011. So much for limiting spending.

R&E part 2 (8:47 pm 2/18/2009) – I should have known better than to trust the Craps numbers. They screwed up.

R&E part 3 (6:52 am 2/19/2009 – Speaking of screw-ups, I stuck an additional zero somewhere. Sorry about that.

Is it time to liquidate GM?

by @ 18:04. Tags:
Filed under Business, Politics - National.

In case you haven’t heard, General Motors has requested another $16.6 billion in federal “loans” taxpayer subsidies after burning through its initial $13.4 billion in bailout money. My math says that is $30 billion, which doesn’t include all the billions that GM got for “clean car” research, or its share of $15 billion given by the feds taxpayers to it and the other members of the not-so-Big 3 for plant modernization.

Why is that $30 billion significant? Dave Schuler over at The Glittering Eye (H/T – Doug Mataconis) points out that the value of GM’s assets is roughly $30 billion. That’s right, sports fans. when GM gets its additional bailout money, it will owe the federal government its gross liquidation value. That does not account for GM’s liabilities or the fact that, in a liquidation, the liquidated company does not get its full value.

Given the speed with which GM burned through its initial $13.4 billion from the feds the taxpayers, they’ll be through the next $16.4 billion by summer. Then what? At that point, they’ll owe more to just the feds taxpayers than they can get by going through Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation. Do we say at that time, “Okay, we’re in for a pound, we’re in for the ton?” GM won’t even begin to repay the loans until 2012.

Do we say at that time, “Enough! Sink or swim?” Since former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson put the feds at the front of the line in the event of liquidation, and since I expect current Treasury Secretary and Paulson acolyte Timothy Geithner to do the same, that would mean none of GM’s other creditors would get paid. Care to guess what would happen to them?

As painful as it may seem, now is the perfect time to tell GM to sleep with the fishes. We don’t have the money to burn (thank you, Obama and the Spendocrats), and at least some of the GM liquidation would make it to its other creditors.

Life doesn’t hand out “A for effort”

by @ 16:06. Filed under Education.

(H/T – Slublog)

The New York Times reports on a bunch of college slackers who got introduced to a bit of grade reality. They seem to think that a failed effort is worth more than a “C”. They should be thankful that the lesson is gentle; once they hit the real world, a failed effort, regardless of the amount of effort poured in, is a failure.

Gassed by taxes

by @ 15:54. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin, Taxes.

Yesterday, Gov. Jim Doyle (D) unveiled his “Back To The ’70s” budget, which features a whole host of tax increases. The largest is a $540 million tax on oil companies. Despite a claim that they will be prohibited from passing it along, it will be passed along, with interest paid to the oil companies from the state once that provision is adjudicated as unconstitutional.

I hope you didn’t spend your $13/week from Obama. More than half of that will be going right to Uncle Craps so he can build roads continue to raid the transportation fund.

Revisions/extensions (8:50 pm 2/18/2009) – The Doyle administration halved the effects. Still, considering all the other taxes that are in the budget, I hope you haven’t spent that $13/week from Obama (assuming, of course, you qualify for it).

Hypocrisy, DNR-style

by @ 15:24. Filed under Envirowhackos, Politics - Wisconsin.

Dr. Emil Shuffhausen found some serious hypocrisy from the Wisconsin DNR (or as Dad29 calls them, Damn Near Russia). Even as they demand that those that own rental properties rip out their current lighting and install high-efficiency lighting, they continue to light up the unoccupied interior of their building like a Christmas tree.

Need to get back in the groove

by @ 15:19. Filed under The Blog.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been too silent lately. I’m still chewing over an epic topic or two, but while I’m chewing, I should fire off some quick hitters.

In that vein, the Emergency Blogging System has issued a Freezing Drizzle Advisory for No Runny Eggs, to be in effect until I’ve emptied out my feed reader.

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