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 December 21st, 2006

DC court whacks McCain-Feingold

by @ 23:59. Filed under Politics - National.

Remember those ads from Wisconsin Right to Life back in 2004, asking us to try to get Russ el-Slimeroad and Nobody’s Senator to break the filibustering of various judicial nominees? They were initially busted under the McShame-Slimeroad Lieberal Protection Act because el-Slimeroad was running for re-election at the time. After having the case sent back to them by the Supreme Court with instructions to “consider the merits of WRTL’s as-applied challenge in the first instance”, the DC District Court ruled 2-1 that it is, indeed, unconstitutional for Congress to prohibit mentioning a federal candidate’s name within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election if the aim of mentioning that name is to influence public policy.

“Financing” the local portion of the commuter choo-choo

by @ 23:30. Filed under Choo-choos, Politics - Wisconsin, Taxes.

The “geniuses” behind the KRM white elephant, er, commuter rail have a real wiener of an idea to finance this albatross: a 0.05% sales tax in Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha Counties to provide $8 million per year. Let’s see; assuming their numbers are right (and they’ve been previously blown up), they start the project $157 million in the hole (assuming no additonal fed funding; the 90% fed funding they want would still leave them $23.7 million short) and have to make up $10.9 million per year in the difference between fares and operating costs. Oops; last time I checked, you can’t do that on $8 million/year, and that’s assuming the Craps’ Department of Revenue coughs up all the money due this latest unelected taxing authority (something they have a problem with). Guess those “other funding options” will inevitably creep back into the mix.

What’s worse, they want to give the county boards authority to levy a 0.45% sales tax to “shift” the cost of running the buses off the property tax rolls. Seeing we have 14 tax-and-spend-and-tax-and-spend-and-spend-and-taxers on the 19-member Milwaukee County Board, there’s another $45 million or so in tax and spending increases. They will see to it that there is no property tax relief, as there are portraits of Thug Holloway to be made, pensions to be doled out, union Rip Van Winkles to be “employed”, and deputies to have sit on the freeways to generate even more revenue.

Taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes

by @ 23:05. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin, Taxes.

In case you’ve been in a cave the last 2 days, I have some good news and some bad news for city of Milwaukee property owners (of which my dad is one):

The good – The city of Milwaukee forgot to include an additional $9 million tax increase requested by Milwaukee Public Schools.

The bad – MPS isn’t going to forego the money, and instead of sending out a special assessment to immediately collect that money, the city is going to borrow it so that the $9 million will turn into $14 million or so once interest is figured in.

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