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 17th, 2009

RTA Madness – Senate edition

by @ 22:04. Filed under Choo-choos, Politics - Milwaukee County, Politics - Wisconsin, Taxes.

The Senate passed their own version of Daughter-of-Necrobudget on a virtual-party-line vote (Jim Sullivan, the target of a recall, was allowed to vote no along with every Republican). Others will cover the rest of the changes, but since I’m a laser on the RTAs, I’ll distill the differences between the Assembly version and the Senate version (thanks again to Greg Bump over at WisPolitics for doing the dirty work):

  • The Chippewa and Fox Valley RTAs are out.
  • The provision to allow Dane County to use its sales tax to fund roads is also out.
  • The Southeast RTA is once again solely focused on the choo-choo, with all funding to the existing Racine and Kenosha buses (i.e. the additional $2 car-rental tax to make the total $18) as well as the requirement of Racine’s and Kenosha’s suburbs to fund the bus systems to get a KRM stop out.
  • The Milwaukee County Transit Authority gets the “Regional” title back, with the sales tax bumped up to 1.0% and the “parks, culture and (county) emergency medical services” joining transit in the 85% (no percentage specified for each category) not allocated to municipal police, fire and EMS (allocated on a per-capita basis).

On to conference, where I expect nothing less than the worst of all worlds.

Four-Blocking the relationship between government and smokers

by @ 8:56. Filed under Health, Politics - National, Politics - Wisconsin.

Tom McMahon does it again:

There’s already a spirited discussion in the Four-Block World comments, so join it.

Rainy Read Wednesday – Christian Schneider’s “McCallum’s Last Laugh”

by @ 8:50. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

Christian Schneider, who besides me is the charter member of the Scott McCallum Fan Club, wonders how the state budget situation would be different had Scott McCallum beat Jim Doyle back in 2002:

During his brief tenure, McCallum proposed a number of items that, had they passed, would have made the current recession infinitely easier to deal with. In his initial budget, in which he faced a $600 million deficit, McCallum proposed capping general fund spending to the same rate that tax revenues increase during a biennium….

In the same budget, McCallum proposed depositing 50% of any unintended revenues into a budget stabilization fund, in the event tax receipts fell short in the future….

Perhaps most importantly, McCallum made real cuts to real ongoing state programs – a decision which may have cost him his governorship. In the 2002 budget repair bill, McCallum proposed phasing out the state’s Shared Revenue program, in which the state sends $1 billion per year to local governments.

Related to that, Christian introduces us to Doyle’s new best friend – Rosy Scenario. I guess the difference in acceptable-to-Craps tax assumptions between exiting a mild recession (5% from McCallum, which is the 20-year-average) and in the midst of a devastating one is less than 0.5 percentage points.

Obamaese

by @ 5:19. Filed under Miscellaneous, Politics - National.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but President Obama and his administration have taken over the dictionary.  Well, not exactly the whole dictionary, yet, but they have given new meaning to a number of words and phrases that haven’t had a change in their meaning from the advent of the English language until now.  I haven’t been able compile the complete list of the New Obamaese Dictionary definitions but I have a few that you should be aware of.

Shovel Ready – Any project that rational taxpayers would vote a politician out of office for if they had voted to fund it during normal legislative processes.

Stimulus – A spending bill that contains “Shovel Ready” projects that is passed only with Democrat support

Uniquely Qualified – an individual who is either a tax cheat or has other ethical issues, such that they wouldn’t be hired for, and can only get a role through appointment to a Democrat Administration role.  (see Czar)

Czar – an individual who is given absolute power over a portion of the economy for which they have absolutely no working knowledge.  Czar’s are often “Uniquely Qualified.”

I don’t want to run – A phrase used immediately prior to a:  blaming one’s predecessor, b:  expressing surprise that the situation was much worse than you had thought and c:  making a claim that the actions you have taken will be “temporary.”  Typically, a Czar who is Uniquely Qualified is appointed to run the business that “I don’t want to run.”

As I have repeatedly said – A phrase used to point the listener to a specific one of the many positions the speaker has taken on a particular topic.  It is not used to dismiss the positions not addressed during the use of this phrase, only to make you think the speaker has actually made a final decision, at least until they next use of the phrase:  As I have repeatedly said…

I’m trying to keep a list of these.  If you have others, send them along.  Who knows, we may be able to give Webster a run for his money by the end of four years.

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