No Runny Eggs

Blogger/BlogSpot was having a bit of a problem briefly. Blogger was telling me there was an error in logging into the FTP server, but still sending my posts through. It seems to be fixed now.

This time, it’s the Assembly ‘Rats upholding Craps’ veto of AB 766, which sought to reimpose limits on pain-and-suffering damages tossed out by the Craps’-packed State Supreme Court. The original bill passed the Assembly 64-30, with 4 paired votes and 1 non-vote. Adding the paired votes would have pushed the totals to 66-32, enough to override Craps for the first time.

However, when push came to shove, the override attempt failed 63-36. Switching their votes to put party and trial lawyers above principle were ‘Rats Chuck Benedict, Jason Fields, and Sheldon Wasserman; while ‘Rat John Steinbrink showed up this time to collect his check from the trial lawyers.

Will the last business to leave Wisconsin please tell We Energies and the other utilities to turn off the electricity; the ‘Rats and the trial lawyers weren’t using the lights they powered.

Elliot celebrates his birthday with the birthday party version of the Carnival.

This revision/extension is a test only. I’m having some problems publishing.

(H/T – Dad29)

And I didn’t even get a chance to bend his ear on this one. He voted for the current version of the Personal Protection Act (SB403). In response, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, who wants to limit possession of what they term “lethal weapons” to pregnant women, doctors, cops, and criminals, in blatant violation of the state Constitution, took out this ad on JSOnline.com. I do have to thank them for pointing out that Plale voted for SB403. However, I’ll be using the phone number they provided to do the exact opposite of what this group wants to have happen; namely, thanking Plale for his vote and encouraging him to repeat it on the override attempt.

I just received a letter from my state Senator, Jeff Plale in response to my voiced opposition to AB15, the ethanol-gas-mandate bill (no word on AB69 though, even though every correspondence that has my address has also dealt with that issue). The text is as follows:

Steve (last name redacted)
(address redacted)
Oak Creek, WI 53154

January 12, 2006

Dear Steve,

I received your message voicing opposition to the proposed ethanol mandate in Wisconsin. I value your input and appreciate you taking the time to express your concerns.

With the rising cost of gasoline, alternative energy sources are being sought out in an attempt to decrease our demand for oil. One proposal has been to use gasoline comprised partially of ethanol. Some of my colleagues believe that the government should step in and require the use of this blended gas in Wisconsin.

One concern with the use of ethanol is its’ level of efficiency. Like many of my constituents, I don’t believe that it is logical to use blended gas if it necessitates filling up more frequently. I realize there are those who believe that blended gas provides some relief to the problem at hand. For this reason, it should be made available. However, I don’t feel the government should step in and mandate its use.

Ethanol has been hailed as a means to lower air pollution. Recent information from the Sierra Club as well as the DNR suggest that ethanol in fact has negative effects on the environment.

Ethanol is not a sufficient answer to our need for cheaper fuel. As your legislator, I will remain dedicated to providing you with a superior solution.

Should you have further concerns regarding this or any other isssue don’t hesitate to contact my office toll free at 800.361.5487 or locally at 744.1444. I look forward to hearing from you again in the future.

Sincerely,

/s/Jeff Plale
STATE SENATOR

I can’t ask for anything more on this issue.

(H/T – Owen)

When the McShame-Slimeroad Lieberal Protection Act was passed and signed, who seriously doubted that LeftStream Media outlets like the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel would encourage the Supreme Court to forget not only that freedom of speech is in the Bill of Rights, but that it comes before freedom of the press? Guess it’s time for a fisking, while I still can.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday on a case having Wisconsin ties and national import. The outcome will decide the strength of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. The court mustn’t weaken the one limited tool Congress has come up with recently to regulate campaign spending and to help ensure clean elections.

That’s funny; I seem to remember from my high-school civics class (I was probably one of the last to have a properly-taught one in the public-school system) that if there is a conflict between a law and the Constitution, the Constitution wins every time, regardless of whether the law “makes sense”. Further, as evidenced by the 2004 elections, McShame-Slimeroad did NOTHING to make the election cleaner.

That means the court should rule in favor of the Federal Election Commission and against Wisconsin Right to Life, a non-profit organization, which is arguing that it was lobbying, not electioneering, when it ran broadcast ads in 2004 that mentioned the name of U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat and one of the law’s namesakes, who was running for re-election….

What part of “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…” doesn’t the idiotorial board understand? Is it “no”, or “abridging”? Let’s define both (from Dictionary.com). The second definition of the adjective version (the first is of “no” is, “Not at all; not by any degree.” The second definition of “abridge” is, “To cut short; curtail.”

Now, let’s rewrite that particular section of the First Amendment so that its plain-English meaning is clear – “Congress shall…not by any degree curtail the freedom of speech….”

…Other organizations that engage in politics – even groups that back a woman’s right to choose an abortion – are siding with Wisconsin Right to Life on this issue.

A blatant attack on rights sure makes strange bedfellows.

Were the ads merely a lobbying tool, then they could run during the blackout periods prescribed by McCain-Feingold. An organization is barred from using funds from its general treasury to air commercials naming candidates during the 30 days before a primary election and the 60 days before a general election.

The Wisconsin group’s commercials, which ran until Aug. 15, 2004, criticized the filibuster in the Senate of President Bush’s appeals court nominees and urged viewers to call Feingold and Sen. Herb Kohl, also a Wisconsin Democrat, and urge them to oppose the filibuster. The group argues that the ads were trying to affect voting in the Senate, not at the ballot box.

Let’s see; the ads addressed an issue up for a vote in the Senate, and mentioned both Senators. If Congress were even more dysfunctional than they are (and they may well be that dysfunctional), if they wanted to avoid public attention to controversial issues, they would simply wait until this “blackout” period to deal with them.

In reality, as the government notes, there’s no clear line between the two activities during election time. In fact, an announced goal of Right to Life in 2004 was Feingold’s defeat. Yet the ads were unrelated to that goal? Not hardly.

That is not germaine. They also had a vested interest in the outcome of the current vote, which was taken prior to the election. Further, Feingold did not have a primary opponent, so even if somehow I missed the “except during a campaign” exemption in the text of the Bill of Rights (or succeeding Amendments), the “blackout” would seem to not apply in this case.

McCain-Feingold sought, among other purposes, to plug a hole that allowed organizations to evade campaign law by running ads that pretended to deal with issues, not candidates. Instead of outright urging viewers to vote against an elected official, they would urge viewers to call that official and express how they felt on a particular issue. The viewers got the point. Were the court to rule in favor of Right to Life, these sham issue ads would make a comeback.

McCain-Feingold does permit third-party ads during the blackout period but by political action committees. Right to Life does have a PAC, but it lacked the funds to run the commercials in question, the organization argues.

You mean like last-second hit pieces on President Bush in both the 2000 and 2004 campaigns (the latter based on a bald-faced lie that likely would have gone uncorrected with the next “logical” step in McShame-Slimeroad, the regulation of blogs)? You mean like editorial endorsements in virtually every election? Those items are specifically protected under McShame-Slimeroad without newspapers and their kind having to register as PACs.

Yes, McCain-Feingold does restrict speech, but there is a balancing act required here. A democracy demands clean and transparent electioneering.

So the idiotorial board admits that the law is un-Constitutional. Let me rewrite those last two sentences a bit and see if the folks at 4th and State would still approve:

This federal bill does restrict the press, but there is a balancing act required here. A democracy demands clean and honest reporting.

I’ll bet they would be up in arms.

Unlike Kevin and Jessica (part 1/2/3/4/5/6/7), I was smart enough not to watch Jim “Craps” Doyle give his (last) State of the State address. I would have thrown up after hearing the opening remarks. Oh, what the heck, let’s take a look at them (from JSOnline) –

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Mr. Speaker Pro-Tempore, Members of the Legislature, Lieutenant Governor Lawton, Constitutional Officers, Supreme Court Justices, Members of the Cabinet, Tribal Leaders, and fellow citizens of Wisconsin.

STOP THE TAPE! Notice who gets the last mention; us poor schmuks who pay the bills and don’t necessarily donate to the Craps War Chest. Roll the tape.

Three years ago, I stood in this building and put my hand on the Bible. I took an oath to lead this state during a time of challenge:

-Our deficit was out of control.
-Our economy was out of steam.
=Too many of our citizens were out of work.
=And for many people, government seemed out of touch.

While we still have a long way to go, just think how far we’ve come.

We cut spending and solved the worst fiscal crisis in our history "¦ without raising taxes.

STOP THE TAPE! What exactly do you call a $2 billion structural deficit (twice the one that Craps inherited)? What about all the fees that went way, way up? And the methods used to “solve” things temporarily weren’t exactly smart (fund transfers up the wazoo, dropping 8% of K-12 school financing for the first 2 years, resulting in massive school-property-tax increases, un-constitutional expansions of Indian gaming with some tribes subsequently withholding payment). All this while other states, such as California, which faced even worse financial crises than Wisconsin, are now flush with cash. Roll the tape.

We invested in education while passing a property tax freeze.

STOP THE TAPE! Explain why property tax levies went up an average of 4% this year, after restoring the recent-historic 2/3rds state funding for education (which, BTW, Craps cut in his first budget). Roll the tape.

We protected SeniorCare for more than 90,000 seniors"¦
And together, we created more than 140,000 new jobs.

STOP THE TAPE! The job creation was no real thanks to anybody in Madison. While there were very limited business reforms, the federal tax cuts had more to do with the creation of jobs than anything else. Further, thanks to a Doyle-packed Wisconsin Supreme Court, the business litigation climate has recently changed way for the worse. Okay, I’ve had enough; I’m feeling nauseous.

I would be remiss if I didn’t comment on the coverage from the Old Media. For those few of you that get the print edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the headline on their coverage of the State of the State address is “Doyle touts ‘affordability agenda'”. That’s funny; I didn’t see anything about government cutting back in the future. I didn’t see any serious proposal from Doyle about making government more affordable.

Just in case you came here first (dunno why), there’s a lot more reaction here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here (if that seems a bit biased against Craps – tough; I’m a conservative, and unlike the presstitutes, I don’t hide that I am highly-opinionated).

Damn. If Jessica is right (and the smart money says she is), it looks like my worst fears are about to be realized, and we’re going to have anti-TABOR packaged as “TABOR”.

Oh well; time for another message or few dozen. It’s not too late to file to run for 2006, even though the RPW is now actively in the business of promoting its own non-conservatives in primary situations (H/T – Owen).

I finally got around to adding Elliot and From Where I Sit. One of these years, I’ll sort the blogroll (yeah, right; procrastination is my last name, or is it York?)

I guess I shouldn’t exactly use “post-mortem”, because I actually made some money. Oh well, let’s review the 2-1-1 against the line/3-1 against the over/under weekend anyway:

Washington 10 @ Seattle 20 (-10-TIE/over 40.5-LOSS) – The Vegas boys had the line perfect, they and I didn’t count on all that rain.
New England 13 @ Denver 27 (-3/under 44) – It’s the altitude, stupid.
Pittsburgh 21 (+10/under 47.5) @ Indianapolis 18 – Thanks to the 10-letter word for “choke” (Vanderjagt) – And all of CBS’s cheering, and the refs couldn’t be worse, couldn’t stop the Steelers from continuing the Manning curse.
Carolina 29 @ Chicago 21 (-3/over 30) – At least the weather was good for those of you on the wrong side of the toll booths. Duh Bears cost me a lossless weekend against the spread.

My pre-season Super Bowl winner, Pittsburgh, is still alive. The other 3 teams I had in the conference championships, however, are out (buh-bye New England, and the Eaglets and Dirty Birds didn’t even make the playoffs).

Jessica has the lowdown. One of the blogs targeted, Playground Politics, has decided to not quite take this lying down and has a poll on what the #1 priority of Legislative Republicans should be this spring. As I type, with a total of 6 votes registered, “TABOR” (my choice) has a slim lead over “Inquisition against bloggers”, with “Economic Development” on the board and “DNR Reform” and “Other” not drawing any interest.

Owen and Jessica both report that an agreement on TABOR is going to happen soon. Jessica quotes Rep. Jeff Stone that the competing versions in the Senate and Assembly should match inside of 2 weeks, while Owen states that unnamed sources say Sen. Glenn Grothman’s version is “very good”. All I hope is that it doesn’t look like the anti–TABOR that is Assembly Joint Resolution 71.

Jib posts his bleak feelings on the near future with regard to Iran, and points us to a piece by Niall Ferguson in The Sunday Telegraph on how “The Great War of 2007” could get started by a nuclear Iran. There are basically 4 ways this can go, with 3 of them resulting in a nuclear-armed Iran attacking both Israel and the US (remember, Iran doesn’t call Israel or Jews “The Great Satan”, it calls the US that) with its nuclear weapons, and the 4th resulting in a massive guerilla/terrorist war:

1. Everybody can stick their heads in the sand and hope that MAD works as well as it did against the Soviets and the ChiComs. The Islamist mindset of a complete lack of regard for life if it means either a worldwide Islamic caliphate or the end of the world ensures that the words behind the acronym will happen no later than the moment that the Iranians decide they have enough nuclear weapons to make their half of MAD a reality (and probably far sooner than them getting a couple thousand warheads).
2. We can stick with diplomacy. Not only can’t the mullahs that run Iran be reasoned with because they feel that it’s their destiny to turn the entire planet into an Islamic caliphate, and not only are certain countries like Russia and Red China actively helping Iran with their intermediate goals of wiping Israel off the face of the Earth and neutering the US (under the enemy-of-my-enemy principal), but two of the 3 EU countries we’re partnering with (France and Germany) don’t seem to really mind a nuclear-armed Iran as long as its target list continues to not include Paris and Berlin. This will have the same result as option #1.
3. We can let the Israelis try to replicate their Orsik success. They just don’t have the assets to pull it off, and there’s a degree of probability that the Iranian response vis-a-vis Israel, namely the destruction of Israel as a non-Islamist state, will have UN-backing (sans the US). Further, because the Iranians and other Islamists will (correctly) assume that Israel couldn’t try this without US aquiescence, they’ll step up their terror war against us, almost certainly with whatever nuclear armament they do have.
4. The US can (essentially unilaterally) take out the weapons program and remove the mullahs as a consequence (something the Israelis are singularily unable to do). Unlike the Israelis, we do have the assets to make this a probability, but we’d run the same risks of escalating the Islamist terror war against us (whether it’s strictly al-Qaeda and Iranian-backed groups or the larger Islamist world) and inviting Russia/Red China (the only entities that could extend a conventional war much beyond a couple months) in on the Iranians’ side.

That having been said, we can’t wait for the Iranians to gather nukes. The mullahs don’t care whether it’s George Bush, John Kerry, John McCain or Russ Feingold in the Oval Office; they want us dead. Al-Qaeda showed them it’s possible, and they’re working feverishly on the means to make 9/11 look like your typical murder. If you’re looking for the UN to save us, you’ve got another thing coming. Two of the permanent members of the UN Security Council are actively backing Iran’s plans, a third (and its partner in the EU) are quietly cheering on the Iranians from the sidelines, and the majority of the UN couldn’t care as long as their delegations got enough warning to evacuate New York City.

Peter has the Bill of Rights (Liberal Version) (original by Joe Mariani at American Daily). I finally found the “Constitutional justification” behind the McShame-Slimeroad Lieberal Protection Act.

That must be the version of the Constitution that Robert “Sheets” Byrd (KKK-West Virginia) carries around in his pocket.

Well, after a 3-1 week against the spread (and 1-3 against the over/under), we’re at the divisinoal round, where the 4 teams with an official week (plus at least another week of effective rest) get into the flow. The window’s almost closed on game #1, so let’s get this party started.

Washington @ Seattle (-10/over 40.5) – The Seahags are just too much for the Redskins.
New England @ Denver (-3/under 44) – Tom Brady finally loses a playoff game.
Pittsburgh (+10/under 47.5) @ Indianapolis – How do you spell choke? I-N-D-Y
Carolina @ Chicago (-3/over 30) – The weather is just too good to expect a 15-14 game.

On their psuedo-blog, Spiceblog, the Spice Boys mocked the limited early interest in a Mark Belling bobblehead eBay auction at 3:34 pm (the price was at $10.00 after opening at $0.99). Never mind that it still had 6 days to go on the auction, and that most eBay auctions generally don’t draw serious bidding until the end.

Paul Noonan, the owner of said bobblehead, noticed this latest attack on an Enemy Of the Sentinel Journal at 4:58 pm (auction still at $10.00). Mark Belling picked it up near the end of his show, around 6 pm. As of this posting, it’s at $71.00 (R/E – make that $96.00 as of 9:11 pm). I wonder who gets more results; the Spice Boys, or the #1-rated Mark Belling.

Patrick, Fred, and James all have more on the backfiring of the latest Spice Bomb.

Revisions/extensions – To their credit, the Spice Boys noticed that the bobblehead didn’t stay at $10.

In between making ad hominem attacks on the right side of the Cheddarsphere and various Republican politicians (including borrowing a line from “Grand Theft Auto: LIberty City Stories” to take a shot at Scott Walker as the second item in today’s column), they renewed their war on Mark Belling today. They take him for task for confusing the squeaky-clean and NRE-approved Hunger Task Force for the scandal-ridden America’s Second Harvest in a column. Never mind that both he and the papers he writes columns for issued corrections at the earliest opportunity (namely, weekly).

Well, let’s take a gander through the rather-massive Corrections list over at the Journal Sentinel:

• 1/11/2006 (that would be the same day that the Spice Boys rip Belling for getting something wrong) had 3 corrections –
  • Because of an editing error, an article Tuesday about a call for plans to reduce response times for emergency medical calls incorrectly stated the timing of a call to rescue Joshua D. Reif, 17, of the Town of Genesee, who died when a vehicle fell on him Dec. 6 while he was working with a tow truck. The emergency crew removed the car about 10 minutes after the accident; it was not dispatched 10 minutes after the accident was reported.
  • An article Tuesday about a Mequon man being charged with reckless homicide incorrectly identified Diana Bartley, an acquaintance of the suspect, Stephen L. Trattner. Bartley is a former foreign language program director for the Mequon-Thiensville Recreation Department, not an administrator with the Mequon-Thiensville School District’s foreign language program.
  • An article in the Business section Sunday about FDIC insurance misstated the first name of a financial planner. His name is Bruce Heling, not Rick Heling.
• And some doozies from the recent past:
  • 1/8/2006 – An article Friday about former secretaries of state meeting with President Bush misstated that George Shultz was secretary of state under President Jimmy Carter. Shultz held the post under President Ronald Reagan.
  • 1/5/2006 – A listing of candidates Wednesday omitted the name of Glenn W. Fieber, the incumbent in a contested race for the Supervisor No. 1 seat on the Vernon Town Board. He will run against Joseph Reilly in the April 4 election.

    The listing also incorrectly indicated how many seats will be filled on the Hartland-Lakeside School District School Board. Three candidates are competing for two seats, not three seats.

  • 12/31/2005 – The New England Patriots defeated the Philadelphia Eagles, 24-21, in the Super Bowl last season. A list in Friday’s Sports section showed the Carolina Panthers as 32-29 losers
  • 12/20/2005 – An article Saturday about the Times Cinema, 5906 W. Vliet St., misstated the theater owner. Millennium Entertainment LLC owns the theater, not Eric Levin. Levin operates the theater.
  • 12/8/2005 – An item Wednesday in the Regional Briefing about the race in Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District incorrectly stated that candidate Jamie Wall had lost to U.S. Rep. Mark Green in 2004. Wall was not a candidate in that election.
  • 12/7/2005 – An article Monday in the Pulse section about biologists who fly in an ultralight plane to lead migrating whooping cranes incorrectly stated the name of the organization with which the biologists are affiliated. They are with Operation Migration, not the International Crane Foundation.
  • 12/1/2005 – An article Tuesday about the closing of Neighborhood Housing Services, which for 26 years has fixed houses in Milwaukee and assisted first-time homebuyers, misstated the name of an agency that will take over many services. Housing Resources Inc., not Housing Services of Milwaukee, will take over many of the services.
  • 11/24/2005 – An article Tuesday about businesses and individuals receiving letters stating that their names would appear on a state Web site about tax scofflaws misstated the number who since have paid back taxes. Two companies and more than 20 individuals have made payments, not two individuals and more than 20 companies. Also, the top 100 tax scofflaws include 33 companies and 67 individuals, not 67 companies and 33 individuals.

Now what was that about splinters, planks and eyes?

Revisions/extensions – Jessica asks whether the Spice Boys plan on writing scathing columns about these and other Journtinel corrections. She also highlights a few more of the multitude.

(H/T – Mark Reardon)

CNN’s Jeff Greenfield, in a rare moment of clarity, comes up with a few questions that sound better than anything coming out of the Senate Judiciary Committee for Judge Alito. Mark takes his stab at the loony-bin second set, so I’ll go for the first set. I’m not a lawyer, but let’s play along anyway:

Everyone seems to agree it’s wrong for judges to “legislate from the bench.” Give us two or three examples from the court’s past where, in your view, the court legislated from the bench. – Greenfield may not like my answers to this question, but Roe v Wade sure as heck comes to mind. Going back into history, the Dred Scott decision was another.

Name two or three justices from the past whom you do not admire. Why not? – Roger Brooke Tanney because he thought that he and his fellow Supremes alone could decide whether certain free blacks were in fact citizens. Earl Warren for starting the modern strain of judicial activism, and Warren Burger for continuing it.

The Ninth Amendment says that the enumeration of certain rights [in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights] should not be held to disparage other rights… .” What does this mean? – The rights listed in the Constitution, whether they are found in the body, the Bill of Rights, or succeeding Amendments, are not the end-all, be-all. That having been said, not everything is a right. Further, the Tenth Amendment seems to rule out any federal role in the determination of those “other” rights except through further amendments.

Justice Scalia says that the court was wrong 80 years ago, when it began to apply the Bill of Rights to the states. Do you agree? – That depends on which Amendment is being applied. Nothing in the First Amendment should be applied to the states; it was one of only 2 (the Tenth being the other) that specifically spoke of limiting only federal power. The other 8, on the other hand, which includes the Second, would and should also apply to the states and local governments.

-If a punishment — say, branding or flogging — was widely accepted at the time the Bill of Rights was written, could it be considered “cruel and unusual” today? – That determination is best left to the legislative process.

(H/T for the McNally piece – Peter)

Joel McNally, in what appears to be a moment of relative clarity, makes the case against replacing the Bradley Center. Unbelievably, I agree with the gist of it. There are, however, some moonbatty items in the piece that need to be shot down…

I remember foolishly believing when the Bradley Center opened that since the Bucks wouldn’t have to pay any rent to play in their luxurious, new sports palace, ticket prices would be dirt cheap.

Ordinary Milwaukeeans and their children would be able to buy the best seats in the house. Democracy would reign in the stands instead of the strict caste system that existed in other cities where movie stars and corporate attorneys sat courtside and working-class families watched with binoculars from the rafters.

That golden age never arrived. It turns out free rent isn’t nearly enough tribute to pay to professional sports franchises owned by millionaires these days. They want cold, hard cash.

The BC was never Lambeau Field, and the Bucks will never be the Packers. They don’t have a 60,000+-name waiting list to let keep growing by undervaluing the seats. Further, there’s a much higher percentage of a particular team’s revenue that’s dependent on the team in the NBA than in the NFL.

As for the binoculars comment, I once had season tickets up in the rafters. I never needed binoculars, though I freely admit that the seats on the lower level are FAR better. Those hoping for the Arena’s coziness were bound to be disappointed; there’s no way to make an 18,000-seat arena as cozy as an 11,000-seat one.

Finally, it’s not just the owners that want cold hard cash. The average NBA salary is somewhere north of $4 million.

Other than that, it’s a pretty good piece. The money shots, as they usually do, come at the end. I espeically like this one:

Payne says newer arenas are destinations that create revenue on non-game days with restaurants and shops. But nothing is stopping the Bradley Center from adding such attractions now, except an embarrassing dearth of customers in existing downtown restaurants and shops on non-game days.

To which I add a general perception on the Friday’s Front Row at Miller Park. It doesn’t seem to be terribly busy on those times I drive past Miller Park when the Brewers aren’t in town.

I’ve got a thing or two I want to comment more-fully on, but I can’t let these items pass unnoticed.

• The heart of the Alito hearings began today. Judge Alito is running circles around the Senate Judiciary Committee.
• From the JS’s DayWatch – In the tire-slashing trial, no sooner was the jury seated than the defense pulled out the race card, seeking a new jury. That was denied, and we’re working through opening statements.
• Some of you folks out in Waukesha County have an election today. Scott Newcomer, who once again got legal confirmation that he is in fact eligible to vote in and run for the 33rd Assembly District, would like to get that magical 75% of the vote, so if you’re going to vote for him, do so before 8 pm when the polls close.

Nick (The World According to Nick host/creator of the Carnival of the Badger) brings the not-so-good news that anonymous annoying Web messages are now punishable by 2 years in Club Fed. Stupid, stupid, stupid, even though I haven’t had to break out the boomstick on any trolls.

That reminds me; how in the heck did I forget to put Nick on the blogroll? I can’t even claim RSS reader failure. Sorry about that, Nick.

Revisions/extensions – Nick points us back to the Volokh Conspiracy and Football Fans for Truth, which make a rather convincing case, pending legal challenges, that this rewrite of existing telephone anti-harrassment law was targeting only VOIP. Of course, I seem to recall a greasy assurance that the McShame-Slimeroad Lieberal Protection Act would be found un-Constitutional by the courts, only to find out that a majority on SCOTUS saw a previously-undiscovered exemption to the First Amendment for mentioning office-holders’ and -seekers’ names around election time without being a member of the LeftStream Media.

Or at least semi-active. I don’t know how much I’ll use this, but I decided to “test-drive” Pollhost.com‘s free poll hosting to see if Jessica could/should use that as a replacement for the ad-plagued Bravenet she had been using. It seems to be working, the ads are limited to the results page, and I even don’t accept cookies from the site.

Now that I’m dried off from testing out the Sykes Cement Shoes (yes, they do sink a blogger), it’s back to business. Channel 12 gives us a story on a state warning about tax refund anticipation loans. I do agree with the state that these are very bad ideas, and for the reason why they state – it’s borrowing your own money at an exhorbitant interest rate. However, there’s a point they don’t bring up. In order to get that massive “refund”, you were borrowing your own money to the state and the feds at no interest rate. What are you doing giving the state so much tax money through the course of the year that you have a massive “refund” coming? That’s money that you could have invested over the course of the year, and instead of having less purchasing power from it by taking it as a late lump sum, you could have either spent it as it came in and had more stuff for your money, or done the really-smart thing, invested it and actually made some money.

Do note that I’m not saying take withholding down to zero (though I would prefer that, with everybody writing a quarterly check like those that earn most of their income from sources where withholding doesn’t happen, just to see how much money is going out the door to government – it’s FAR more than the property taxes, almost 47.5 times more as of 2004, and that’s just the state income tax), because that would, without the estimated quarterly tax payments, get you in a heap of trouble. I do recommend asking your tax advisor a different question than the usual maximize-refund one; “How do I maximize my take-home pay without getting whacked with penalities?”

The dearly-departed “Revisiting history – Part 3” got me in serious trouble with the Blogfather. It seems that because I post-dated it to the end of this month, Charlie’s feed reader got all discombobulated and that resulted in a short trip off the Bender Park boat launch.

Things got worse when I first rubbed it back out; it didn’t want to die. Sure, Blogger said it wasn’t there, but the home page disagreed. I finally re-created a current-dated version and sent it to Jones Island.

Never fear; the gist of it lives on, and it has a more-permanent home, at least until we defeat AB15, the bad-gas bill. Speaking of which, I have yet to hear back from Plale. Looks like I’ll be busy tomorrow (I might even do a road trip for some citizen lobbying if he continues to ignore me, but I won’t take the Voces de la Frontera route and trek into South Milwaukee).

I guess I can’t complain too much about getting whacked off the Blogfather’s blogroll. At least Aaron won’t be borrowing Tony Montana’s little friend.

Revisions/extensions; I’m drying off from the late Polar Bear dunk. No harm, no foul.