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 October 22nd, 2009

Fight for Anita

by @ 13:35. Filed under Politics - National.

I’m just a bit late to this since I’ve been out of it all week, but in case you missed the addition to that sidebar to your left, Anita MonCrief, who has been blowing the whistle on ACORN’s attempts to corrupt the electoral process needs your help. She has become a target of a lawsuit brought by her former employers at Project Vote, an affiliate of ACORN. She is not taking that attempt at intimidation lying down, as she and her lawyers has filed a counterclaim, as well as a motion to dismiss the original lawsuit.

I cannot tell the story better than either Anita or Michelle Malkin can, so if you have any doubts on whether Anita is a person worthy of support, go read, and then head back to donate to her defense fund.

Needless to say, legal representation is not cheap. It also is necessary, because Anita, and James O’Keefe/Hannah Giles/Andrew Breitbart are just their first targets. If ACORN is successful here, they will continue to use the courts to try to silence every other critic.

Hot Read Thursday – William Ahern’s “Can Income Tax Hikes Close the Deficit?”

by @ 11:13. Filed under Politics - National, Taxes.

William Ahern of The Tax Foundation asks the question, and pretty much answers it in the negative. You’ll have to go over there for the lengthy explanation as well as the charts, but I’ll give you a feel for the analysis for the “ebb tide of deficits” year of 2012, as well as a note that the analysis assumes that the higher tax rates won’t influence the larger economy:

This analysis assumes that individuals would not change their income-earning or tax-planning behavior in response to higher tax rates. That is, they would earn the same amounts as they would with current tax rates, and they would fill out their tax returns in the same way they do now. But of course they would alter their behavior. With high-income people paying a federal tax rate over 90 percent, and most states adding on about 8 percent, plus local income taxes and payroll taxes, tax rates would be over 100 percent for many households. In other words, beyond some point government would be taxing away all earnings and there would be no incentive to work….

…(E)ven in 2012 and 2013, when projected deficits are the lowest, according to the Administration, tax rates would have to be levied at prohibitively high levels to erase the deficit. For example, in 2012, even after the top two tax rates have been raised from 33% to 36% and from 35% to 39.6%, all the rates would have to be multiplied by 1.87 to raise enough to erase the deficit (see Table 3).

Average tax payments would rise precipitously in 2012 if that were the year targeted for eradicating the deficit, though not as steeply as in 2010.

Table 4 shows the effect on average tax payments in 2012 if Congress decided to close the deficit that year. Low-income filers (AGI between $0 and $20,000) would pay $248 instead of $129; middle-income filers (AGI between $75,000 and $100,000) would pay about $13,700 instead of $7,000; and the highest-earning filers (AGIs over $1 million) would pay about $1,650,000 instead of $935,000.

Walker, 7 supervisors to furlough themselves

by @ 10:36. Filed under Politics - Milwaukee County.

While the story in today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is heavily-slanted in favor of the supervisors, so much so that they include three supervisors donating 4 days’ worth of pay to entities other than the county government, it is encouraging to see that Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker and several members of the County Board are taking the same 4-day lack of pay that they are having most of the county workers take, even though state law says that they cannot change their pay in office.

This stems from last week’s 16-1 vote by the County Board to order most of the county’s workers to take four unpaid days off between now and the end of the year. Supervisor Christopher Larson, in a moment of clarity, circulated a memo to the other supervisors asking they forego 4 days’ of pay (roughly $780 out of their $50,679 annual salary), and Supervisors Paul Cesarz (my supervisor), Mark Borkowski, Patricia Jursik, Joseph Rice, Joe Sanfelippo, and Jim “Luigi” Schmitt said they would do so. Borowski gave the following quote to the Journal Sentinel: “What’s fair is fair. I’m going to treat myself like a regular county employee.”

In a separate action, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker said that he would return $1,936 (four days’ worth of the executive’s pay), in addition to the $10,000 he already returns.

Meanwhile, Supervisors Gerry Broderick, Lynne De Bruin, and Johnny Thomas said they would donate an equivalent amount to various charities and non-county-government entities. De Bruin noted that her donation to a Milwaukee County Zoo trust fund for animals could be deducted from her taxes.

Now, to the stupid statements uttered by some of the supervisors. First up, the aforementioned Schmidt. We actually have two of them from him; that he doesn’t have the spare cash to give up $780 in one fell swoop, and that he already “sacrificed” by giving up the enhanced pension benefits (a 25% boost in the payments plus an unlimited-time backdrop) that he voted for. Points of order #1 – the county workers aren’t being asked to give up those four days of pay in one fell swoop. In fact, it is spread over four biweekly pay periods. Somehow I think Schmitt can come up with four payments of $190.

Point of order #2 – the major long-term problem with county finances is due in large part to those enhanced pension benefits Schmitt voted for.

Next up on the stupid statement parade – Supervisor Theo Lipscomb, who said he gave up $25,000 a year to work in county government and is officially undecided on whether he’ll take some personal pain. What, he couldn’t figure out that being a Milwaukee County Supervisor means that he doesn’t really have to give up anything from his other job? Of course, considering his leanings, he seems to view government as a bottomless piggy bank.

Finally, we have the one person who explicitly rejected the idea of giving anything back, John Weishan. News flash for Karen’s little brother – that’s your budget that’s blown up since you overrode almost all of Walker’s vetoes.

Going down, down, down, down

by @ 8:44. Filed under Politics - National.

Rasmussen Reports has the mostly-bad news for Barack Obama in today’s edition of the Daily Presidential Tracking Poll, a 3-day rolling average of 1,500 likely voters asked to rate the President’s job approval. The dirty details:

  • Total disapproval beats total approval 52%-47%, the twelth consecutive day that more people disapprove of Obama’s job performance than approve of it (at least to the nearest whole percentage point). Also, it has been 17 days since more people (again to the nearest whole percentage point) approved of Obama’s job performance than disapprove of it.
  • The Presidential Approval Index, which is the percentage of those who strongly approve minus the percentage of those who strongly disapprove, is once again tied for its lowest rating at -13, marking the first time it has been in double-digit negatives for 7 consecutive days. Worse, the last time it was not in negative territory was on 6/29, when it was +1.
  • Among independents, the Presidential Approval Index is a whopping -22 (18% strongly approve, 42% strongly disapprove)
  • Forgot to mention originally the 26% Strong Approval overall is Obama’s worst performance to date, and that Obama is within the error of rounding of losing “Strong Approval” among Democrats (if it already hasn’t been lost; the publicly-available numbers are rounded to the whole percentage point, and that is at 50%).

No wonder he and his ilk want the opposition, whether it be Fox News, insurance companies, the financial services industry or the US Chamber of Commerce, to be shut up.

Revisions/extensions (8:53 am 10/22/2009) – Forgot to include one key bad element.

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