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 June 7th, 2007

Taxpayer rally – 6/15/2007

by @ 15:31. Filed under Taxes.

The Wisconsin Club for Growth, the national Club for Growth, and Americans For Prosperity invite you to a taxpayer rally at the Pewaukee Country Springs Hotel from 1 pm to 3 pm on Friday, June 15, 2007. Milwaukee County Executive (and should’ve been governor) Scott Walker will be emceeing the event, and Newt Gingrich will be showing up.

It is free, but the organizers do ask you to pre-register. You can do that at the link above.

For those of you who need directions, take I-94 to Waukesha County Highway G (Exit 291), head north to Golf Road (the north frontage road), then turn right and head a bit down the road until you reach the hotel on the left side of the road.

See you there.

Damn, I guess this IS serious

by @ 15:19. Filed under Weather.

The Storm Prediction Center has issued a Particularily Dangerous Situation Tornado Watch for eastern Wisconsin (as well as the central upper peninsula of Michigan and northern Illinois) until midnight. They say there is a 90% chance of at least 2 tornadoes and a 50% chance of at least one destructive (F3 or greater) tornado.

Hold onto your hats, folks. It’s hot, humid and windy out there, and this line that’s a-coming has been dropping a lot of rotation between eastern Iowa through western Wisconsin up to the western edge of the UP.

Doyle and Legislature – “This will not stand”

by @ 12:42. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin, Taxes.

The Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance figured out that, as a percentage of personal income, the Wisconsin tax bite dropped from 12.18% in 2003-2004 (fiscal year 2004) to 12.13% in 2004-2005 (fiscal year 2005), which dropped our national rank from 6th to 8th. Shhh, don’t tell the tax-increasers in Madistan because that will cause them to redouble (again) their efforts to make us #1.

Before the rest of you break out the bubbly, there are several rather ugly caveats:

  • First, the Census Bureau, which provides the numbers that WTA looks at, is about 2 years behind. Anybody care to guess what the FY2006 and FY2007 numbers will read?
  • The WTA said in that press release, “The drop in rank was due primarily to increased taxes elsewhere, rather than reduced taxes here.” So, I’ll explore that.
  • Both corporate income taxes (up from 0.41% of personal income in 2004 to 0.44% of personal income in 2005) and property taxes (up from 4.42% to 4.43% of personal income) went up faster than total income, which went up 6.54% (combining a 0.47% increase in population and a 6.04% increase in per-capita income; numbers collated by me from from the Census Bureau). In terms of dollars, corporate income taxes went up 14.77% while property taxes went up 4.94%.
  • That rather-astonishing increase in total income masked increases in personal income taxes (4.07%) and sales taxes (3.26%).
  • With inflation between July 2004 and July 2005 at 3.17%, and population growth at 0.47%, every major category other than sales taxes went up faster than the combined effects of inflation and population growth.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford a $3 billion tax increase between now and 2009.

Revisions/extensions (11:23 am 6/8/2007) – Since Blogger seems to be having an issue sending out pingback requests, others that picked up on this from here….

– Dad29, who points out that we’re also in the lower quintile of GDP growth
– Headless Blogger, who asks if 0.05% is significant (it’s $25 for somebody making $50,000, so it’s not exactly significant).

Mascot contest

by @ 10:28. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

Over at the WPRI blog, Christian Schneider is looking for ideas on the updated mascot for the Wisconsin Legislature. A bit of history; in 1945, they officially named a seeing-eye German shepherd as their mascot. Chime in there with your suggestions.

Guess I’m a popcorn-eating gorilla

by @ 10:07. Filed under Immigration.

If you, unlike The Wall Street Journal‘s idiotorial board, remember 9/11 and the fact that the Islamokazis that almost took them out (their NYC offices are across the street from the World Trade Center site) were illegal aliens, you do not want to miss today’s Vent.

I can just see Michelle quoting Bugs to the Gashouse Gorillas, er, the WSJ idiotorial board, “WHAM! A homer! WHAM! ANOTHER HOMER! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!”, and then backing it up like Bugs.

Race to be first to drop out, the Pubbie edition

by @ 9:39. Filed under Politics - National.

Contestant #1 is Wisconsin’s Own (embarrassment with a trunk, as opposed to multitudes of those with furless tails) Tommy “The Other” Thompson. With the news that the first two-thirds of Rudi McRomney are skipping the August 11 Iowa straw poll that TOT was hoping to use to catapult into the top tier, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting he is now “completely rethinking” the straw man poll gambit (H/T – Owen).

Contestant #2 is somebody who I didn’t have pegged as an early quitter, Tom Tancredo. Fresh off of stepping on his tongue in Tuesday’s debate, the Rocky Mountain News is reporting that once he’s done with his previously-scheduled appearances, he’ll be targeting Pubbie Congresscritters that want amnesty (H/T – Slublog).

If I could find mhking’s “Place Bets Now” graphic, I would be using it. FOUND IT!

The action is not only on who is first, but on whether one or both drop before Fred Thompson announces that his exploratory committee has been converted to a campaign committee.

Miracles never cease?

by @ 9:12. Filed under Miscellaneous.

P-Mac relays a story about a driver who actually stopped to let him complete his crossing of Kilbourn. The odd thing is that the car had Illinois plates.

Either that is the oddest sort of FIB (note to Patrick; if you want a future as a headline writer, you would’ve called the post “No FIBbing” instead of “No fibbing”), or that driver heard about the sting operation the MPD occassionally does downtown.

Why I’ve been so quiet on Wisconsin lately

by @ 9:04. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin, Taxes.

After reading the WisPolitics’ Budget Blog pinprick-by-pinprick method of the Joint Finance Committee’s expansion of the $1.74 billion $2.1 billion $2.6 billion damn-near-$3 billion-and-climbing tax hikes in the budget, I’ve run out of vendictives to toss at the asshats at Madistan.

PNN covers Normandy

by @ 8:54. Filed under War, War on Terror.

(H/T – CDR Salamander)

The Combat Report put together a little ditty on how the modern pressitutes would have covered D-Day if it happened 63 years later than it did. Thank God they weren’t around back then to destroy the war effort, because we would be speaking German east of the Rockies and Japanese west of the Rockies.

Stevens Point schools closed today

by @ 8:35. Filed under Weather.

(H/T – Jay Weber)

The broad (side note; ya think that’s the reason) that runs Stevens Point schools decided to close schools because of the threat of severe thunderstorms this afternoons. That extends the Stevens Point school year another day because she already burned through all the planned snow days.

STUPID! PATHETIC! What would she be doing in tornado alley? School year-round?

But seriously, the weather will definitely be interesting.

Open Thread Thursday – 6/7/2007

by @ 7:30. Filed under Open Thread Thursday.

Still waiting for the first comment on one of these, but with more people and commenters, one of these weeks this thing will take off.

Don’t forget about Drinking Right. The intrepid founder, Casper, may have taken a sabbatical from blogging, but that isn’t stopping the drinking because that’s what it’s all about. Be at Papa’s Social Club (7718 W Burleigh in Milwaukee) on June 12th about 7.

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