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 17th, 2008

Wile Lee Holloway, economic super genius

by @ 21:48. Filed under Business, Politics - Milwaukee County, Taxes.

(H/T – Owen, basically just so I can send the trackback to the discussion there)

Charlie Sykes has the text of a press release from Milwaukee County Board Chair Lee “Thug” Holloway purporting to claim that, even with a 1-percentage-point increase in the sales tax in Milwaukee County, it would still be “cheaper” to shop in Milwaukee County than in surrounding counties:

FACTS PROVE COUNTY EXECUTIVE’S "˜TAX ISLAND’ CLAIM IS FALSE

Adjusted for gas prices, most County residents would still get better deal within Milwaukee County

Milwaukee, WI – Milwaukee County Board Chairman Lee Holloway issued the following analysis after the County Executive vetoed an advisory referendum on taxes and claimed a small increase in the sales tax (and decrease in the property tax) would create a tax island in Milwaukee County. The County Executive chose a Greenfield camera store to make the announcement.

At today’s gas prices, a 1-cent increase in the sales tax would not create a tax island. For a camera costing $500, the sales tax in Milwaukee County would rise by $5. But, factoring in our current gasoline prices, it would be slightly more costly for many Milwaukee County residents to drive to the nearest camera stores in Waukesha County . Using the County Executive’s example of Art’s Cameras Plus on S. 76th Street in Greenfield, the nearest comparable camera stores outside of Milwaukee County are:

* Art’s Cameras Plus, 2130 W. Silvernail Road, Pewaukee (18 miles)

* Best Buy, 19555 W Bluemound Rd, Brookfield (14 miles)

* Mike Crivello’s Camera & Imaging Center, 18110 W. Bluemound Road, Brookfield (12 miles)

At a minimum, the nearest camera store outside of Milwaukee County is 24 miles roundtrip from Art’s Greenfield location. If an average vehicle gets 20 miles/gallon and fuel is $4.29/gallon, then the $5 in sales tax savings for a $500 camera would be offset by an increase in fuel of $5.14, making the Waukesha County purchase slightly more expensive than purchasing at the Art’s Camera store in Greenfield .

If the customer would choose to drive to the Art’s Camera location in Pewaukee (36 miles roundtrip from the Greenfield location), fuel costs would increase by $7.72, making the Milwaukee County purchase $2.72 cheaper.

Let’s send the train into the explosives shed, shall we? First, what idiot would drive from his or her residence to Art’s Camera in Greenfield, head out of the county, then return to Art’s Camera in Greenfield on his or her way back home? That difference in mileage would properly be the difference of driving from one’s residence to Art’s Camera in Greenfield and back and driving from one’s residence to an out-of-the-county store and back.

Second, Holloway forgot that the sales tax in Milwaukee County is already 0.5 percentage points higher than it is in Waukesha County (or Racine County, for that matter). Thus, if Holloway got his way, it would be an additional $1.50 per $100 spent, not $1 per $100 spent.

Now, let’s take a more-realistic example of somebody living at 35th and North, smack dab in the middle of Holloway’s district. I’ll even make it easier for Holloway by taking the Greenfield Art’s Camera out of the equation and substituting the far-closer Wauwatosa Best Buy. For the hypothetical resident looking for a camera, it’s a 10-mile round-trip to the Wauwatosa Best Buy and a 27-mile round-trip to the Brookfield Best Buy.

Here comes the tricky part; the trip to the Wauwatosa Best Buy is entirely on city streets, while the trip to the Brookfield Best Buy is mostly on the freeway (roughly 20 miles). As most vehicles get better gas mileage on the highway (Toyota and Ford hybrids excepted), it’s not accurate to simply say that the trip to Brookfield is 17 miles longer and use the same gas mileage estimate for both. Therefore, let’s use my car, a 2004 Subaru Outback Sport, as the vehicle of choice for that resident. It is rated at 21 mpg in the city and 28 mpg on the highway, using the EPA estimate from that year. My experience has been that, for once, the EPA is pretty close to accurate.

The trip to Wauwatosa (10 city miles divided by 21 city mpg) would take about 0.48 gallons, which, using the Holloway estimate of $4.29/gallon, would cost $2.06. The trip to Brookfield (20 highway miles divided by 28 highway mpg, plus 7 city miles divided by 21 city mpg) would take 1.05 gallons and cost $4.50. Going to Brookfield would cost an additional $2.44. That would make the trip out to Brookfield worth it with a camera pre-tax price of $162.67 or higher.

It gets even better for that resident (and uglier for Holloway) if public transportation is used. The MCTS fare is $2 each way to Wauwatosa, or $4 total. The combined MCTS/Waukesha Metro Transit fares, including a $0.25 zone fee for taking Rt. 10 west of 124th St. and a $0.25 transfer fee between the two bus systems is $2.50 out to Brookfield and $2.25 back, or $4.75 total. If that resident wanted to spend more than $50 and take public transportation, he or she would be better off going out of the county.

It would be a boon to communities surrounding Milwaukee County, especially Waukesha and Racine, which do not impose the 0.5% county sales tax that Milwaukee, Ozaukee and Washington Counties impose.

President Pelosi? Not so fast.

by @ 19:57. Filed under Politics - National, Presstitute Follies.

(H/T – Ed Morrissey)

ABC News engages in some fantasy about how Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) can maneuver herself into the Oval Office come January 20. Let’s more-fully explore this.

The first trigger in this series of events would be a failure of either John McCain or Barack Obama to get to 270 votes in the Electoral College as recognized by a joint session of Congress. The most-likely method is a “clean” 269-269 split, but it’s not the only one. There are also the possibilities of a “faithless elector” denying one or the other 270 electoral votes, and a third-party candidate getting at least 1 electoral vote.

I will briefly touch on the possibility that a sufficient number of challenges to the electoral votes in Congress exists to prevent a certification of all 538 electoral votes. That very-nearly happened in the 1876 election, with the final Congressional acceptance of the results (as judged by a special joint Congressional/Judicial commission) on March 2, 2 days prior to the expiration of the term of Ulysses S. Grant. 3 U.S.C. Sections 15-18 govern the counting of the electoral votes and resolution of challenges to same, and under the limits of debate and recess, Congress would be able to handle no fewer than 56 objections prior to noon on January 20.

At the point no candidate gets at least 270 electoral votes, the 12th Amendment provides that the House of Representatives chooses the President:

…The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice….

ABC News claims that the Democrats currently have a 26-21 advantage in this, with 3 states having evenly-divided delegations. They neglected to factor in the Democratic pick-up in Mississippi, which makes their advantage among the state delegations 27-21-2. That would suggest an Obama victory should it go to the House. However, it won’t be this Congress that will decide this; it will be the next one. I haven’t taken the time to evaluate the possibility of Republican pick-ups (or further losses) outside of Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional, which would make Wisconsin’s delegation evenly-divided if John Gard were to oust Steve Kagen, so I can’t evaluate whether there would no longer be a majority (vice a plurality) among the delegations.

Let’s say that the House deadlocks. The 20th Amendment provides that the Vice President elect would assume the duties until such time that a President qualifies. However, the same situations that would cause an Electoral College deadlock would likely cause it to not choose a Vice President elect, as the 12th Amendment further reads:

…The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed,…

In that case, the Senate would choose the Vice President under the authority of the 12th Amendment:

…(I)f no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice….

ABC presumes that the Senate could deadlock on this issue, with the line of succession as delimited by 3 U.S.C. Section 19 (under the authority of the 20th Amendment) giving the keys to the White House to Pelosi. Indeed, even though the Democrats have an absolute plurality of 49-49-2, and a working majority of 51-49, Joe Lieberman is unlikely to vote for Obama as he has endorsed John McCain. However, in addition to the fact that it won’t be this Congress doing the voting, there’s the “slight” matter of Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution – “The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.” As the Senate would be choosing between the top 2 vote-getters, and as the 111th Congress would be at the beginning of its term, essentially the only way for the Senate to not get a majority on its own is if they were evenly-divided at 50, which would give Dick Cheney the 101st and decisive vote.

Keep dreaming, ABC.

The Morning Scramble/Open Thread Thursday – 7/17/2008

by @ 9:11. Filed under Open Thread Thursday, The Morning Scramble.

Let’s see if I can keep this one short because it is Open Thread Thursday…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm2Mdma2dXw[/youtube]

  • Ace and the Morons break out the funny to help out the late-night talkers with their drought of Obamination jokes (I do have to put a content warning on this; we are talking about Morons).
  • John McCormack pins a few on Barack Obama (literally).
  • Curt found no principles from Obama. I must disagree that there is no history though; while there isn’t much, it is of a far-left nature.
  • Byron York wonders why Obama feels at such a disadvantage to John McCain despite a $52 million month.
  • Jim Geraghty answers that; the DNC is burning through its meager funds as fast as they come in. Bonus math – the Obama campaign spent $27 million in June.
  • Jim Hoft found that the Obamination supporters are practicing the Chicago Way, Mob Edition, on the die-hard Clinton supporters. Why am I not surprised they’re resorting to violence? Could it be that Obama is a Chicago politician, or is it that they’re hard-core lefties?
  • Lawhawk identifies the word Jesse Jackson used in the part of the infamous tape not aired yet (again, a content warning is in effect; it’s not the sanitized n***** you’ll see elsewhere).
  • Enough Obamination; let’s go to the Envirowhacko Watch – Ace caught Chuck Schumer wanting more drilling…in Saudi Arabia. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Chuckie said that Saudi oil is funding Al Qaeda.
  • Fred Keller lists all the products that come from a 42-gallon barrel of oil. Guess Harry Reid’s sick of all those products as well.
  • Van Helsing found mathematical proof that there is no such thing as “Global Warming”. Algore Goracle was last seen with a flamethrower in the Arctic.
  • Allahpundit is impressed that Newt Gingrich got 1.3 million signatures on his Drill Now petition to Congress. I will take the time now to remind my Wisconsin readers to sign Phil Williamson’s Drill Now petition going to the Wisconsin delegation in DC.
  • JammieWearingFool caught Algore Goracle baying at the moon on energy. Question for the Goracle – if you want to use clean coal, why did the guy you shared the ticket with twice lock up all the clean coal?
  • Paul Socha notes the US Forest Service wants to shut down 55% of the roads in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.
  • Jim Hoft proves it’s not about the environment, but about sending us back to the 16th Century, for the envirowhackos.
  • Mark Heuring has the title of the day – “The Forecast Calls for Pain”. Actually, that’s an understatment.
  • Do I cut things off here, or do I continue? There’s too much in the feeder, so let’s clear it out. Moron Pundit explains his theory of just war. It tracks well with what I’ve said before; wars end only when one side suffers enough death dealt with sufficient horror that it gives up rather than continue to suffer horrific death.
  • Dad29 laces into Jim Doyle for his simplistic opposition to a temporary halt to the gas tax that feeds the state’s transportation personal slush fund.
  • American Pundit caught Yahoo acting like Google and recaptioning an AFP photo for leftist propaganda purposes. Guess I must have missed the Yahoo-Google merger.
  • John Derbyshire bemoans the coming application of Title IX to college science and math programs. I wonder which programs will become the analogues to the UW baseball team and Marquette wrestling team.
  • James T. Harris blasts McCain for kissing the NAA(L)CP ring.
  • Jeff Emanuel has the rest of the story on the 9 American soldiers killed while fending off a massive, coordinated attack on their outpost.
  • GayPatriotWest caught The News Organization That Cannot Be Quoted cooking the dispatches again.
  • Michael Rubin questions the wisdom of negotiating with those that want to kill you regardless of the result of said negotiations.
  • Charlie Sykes notes the censorship of history is alive and well on college campuses. It matters not that the book in question praises the defeat of the KKK; the fact that it mentions and pictures the KKK is enough to set off the ninnies.
  • Ed Morrissey notes Mitt Romney is clearing the decks of $45 million in loans to himself, presumably so he can be a more-viable candidate for VP. More likely, he’s trying to maximize cash flow to active campaigns (unlike a certain ‘Rat ex-contender).

Sorry about the length; there’s just so much material. Still, I know I missed some good stuff. Let me know what I missed.

Roll bloat – shore edition

by @ 6:59. Filed under The Blog.

I haven’t had my morning Dew yet, so I don’t have anything really witty to say. However, I do recommend adding North Shore Exponent to your rolls and readers because Kyle Maichle does have a way with words.

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