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 April 18th, 2011

Recommended Reading (04/18/11)

by @ 21:29. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Here are, in my view, interesting, noteworthy columns and articles from the past week that I highly recommend:

Drop protest and pass the ketchup

“Of all the things to protest — Brat Fest!?

Can we not even enjoy a brat for charity in Wisconsin without partisan politics rudely intruding?

So what if a handful of Johnsonville Sausage executives, family members and employees donated $44,250 to Republican Gov. Scott Walker over the last five years.”

School lunch madness

“The principal, Elsa Carmona, is quoted as saying that her students can either eat the school cafeteria food or ‘go hungry.’ Wow! Tough dietary deal. Carmona went on to say that some parents are morons who allow their children to eat garbage and that is not going to happen on her watch.”

On this aborted fetus, the Democrats plant their flag

“(Senator Jon) Kyl said: ‘You don’t have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your cholesterol or your blood pressure checked. If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood. That’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.’

The entire mainstream media immediately rose in angry denunciation of Kyl — based on Planned Parenthood’s claim that abortion constitutes less than 3 percent of the services it provides.

Apparently, that depends on the meaning of ‘services it provides.’ If taking 30 seconds to write a prescription for birth control pills is considered the equivalent of a two-hour, multiple-visit $450 abortion, then perhaps abortion does constitute only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s work.”

Taxes are not too low: It’s the spending, stupid!

” If Congress, rather than borrowing or cutting spending, raised income taxes by the $1.3 trillion necessary to pay for 2010 deficit spending, it would need to more than double income tax collections. In fact, income tax revenue would need to increase by 144% to cover the overspending.”

Who pays for government?

“It’s Tax Day, a time when Americans briefly think about how much their government costs, instead of daydreaming about all the wonderful things it promises to do for them.  

Who pays for government?  The Evil Rich provide the lion’s share of the income taxes.”

The Trump rebellion

“I saw The Donald open up a can of verbal whup ass on Obama on Hannity last Thursday and Friday night. It was extremely convincing in that he had refreshingly solid, no-BS answers for the multifaceted debacles ‘the worst president ever’ has entrenched us in and explained how he sees himself as the crap-cutting dealmaker to pull us out.”

Oil without apologies

“We’re going to need oil and gas and coal for a long time if America wants to keep the lights on.”

A missing detail

“Wouldn’t you think if you were going to do a front page story about a teacher retiring early because of the hardship posed by Scott Walker’s bargaining changes you might want to give the story some context by saying how much the person experiencing this agony actually makes?

Well since the Journal Sentinel won’t do it for us, I will.”

Nobody’s Senator raised no money this quarter. In other news, water is wet.

Since The Hill decided to breathlessly report that Herb “Nobody’s Senator” Kohl raised $0.00 in the first quarter of 2011, Baseball Crank decided to ruminate on it, and Allahpundit put it in the Hot Air Headlines, I’ll explain why it means NOTHING for everybody.

Let’s first go back to the ends of 2004 (just under 2 years before Kohl’s re-election in 2006) and 2010 (just under 2 years before Kohl is up for re-election again). By the end of the 2003-2004 cycle, Kohl raised $2,148 in individual contributions, contributed $185,000 to himself, and had $1,493 cash on hand with no debt. By the end of the 2009-2010 cycle, Kohl raised $270 from individual contributions, contributed $281,500 to himself, loaned himself $1,000,000 and had a net of $4,348 cash on hand (after removing the $1 million in self-debt). The situations were, outside of Kohl’s early loan to himself this time around, similar 2 years out.

Next, on to the first quarter of 2005 and the first quarter of 2011. In the first quarter of 2005, Kohl raised…wait for it…wait for it…$195.00 in individual contributions, loaned himself $2,000,000, spent $34,000 on polling, and spent another $20,000 on various other expenses. In the first quarter of 2010, Kohl raised…wait for it, wait for it…$0.00 in individual contributions, spent $42,000 on polling, and spent another $9,000 on other expenses. Again, the situations were similar.

As for the entirety of the 2005-2006 election cycle, Kohl raised $11,342 from individuals, $450 from non-party PACs, $120 from the Democrat Party PACs, and loaned himself $6,250,000. Once again, Kohl proved that the bastardization of his opening campaign slogan of “Nobody’s Senator But Yours” to “Nobody’s Senator” is the operative phrase.

Whether Kohl decides to run again or not is at least as much predicated on the fortunes of his Milwaukee Bucks as the decision is on anything else, and certainly more than on his (lack-of-)fundraising prowess. We in Wisconsin have often joked that the Bucks are a once-every-six-years playoff contender, coinciding with their owner’s re-election cycle.

Wisconsin Supreme Court election – what now?

by @ 7:26. Filed under Elections, Politics - Wisconsin.

In case you’ve been in a cave since mid-day Friday, the county-level canvasses of the election have been completed, and Justice David Prosser has a 7,316-vote (or a 0.4881-percentage-point) lead. The 3-business-day clock is running on challenger Joanne Kloppenburg’s and her campaign’s ability to ask for a recount of any or all of the wards in the state, with the costs to the counties being borne by the taxpayers as the margin is just under the 0.5-percentage-point cut-off. The word on the ether, or at least WISN-AM and the Jay Weber Show, is that the Kloppenburg campaign will have a press conference this afternoon, even though they do have until 5 pm Wednesday to inform the Government Accountability Board (Wisconsin’s state-level election authority) of their decision.

There are two choices the Kloppenburg campaign has at this point. They could decide to not ask for a recount, and let the pending GAB re-canvass be the final word. That would result in GAB announcing on May 15, the date assigned for the announcement, that Justice Prosser has won another 10-year term on the Supreme Court.

They could also decide to ask for a recount. It doesn’t matter how many or few wards they request, because, if they choose this path, the goal is not going to be to overcome the 0.4881-percentage-point lead Prosser has. No recent recount with at least 1.5 million votes at stake has resulted in a change of margin of more than 0.05 percentage points, even with a post-recount judicial challenge to boost the margin-of-change.

Assuming that the Kloppenburg campaign strategy is to “win” by any means possible, their goal, under this scenario, is to get a post-recount judicial appeal into what will amount to a kangaroo court, presided over by a reserve (retired, for those of you outside Wisconsin, and thus no longer accountable to the voters) judge appointed by Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, who has a thinly-veiled vested interest in a specific outcome. Their strategy will be to have declared, at a minimum, the city of Brookfield (which Waukesha County clerk Kathy Nickoulas forgot to report to the Associated Press on election night, but which was reported on the county-level canvass) incompetent to determine the affairs of Wisconsin the Kingdom of Dane. Assuming no margin change in a recount, tossing out the city of Brookfield results woudl give Kloppenburg an 87-vote “lead”.

Of course, if the recount finds a further net gain for Prosser (after all, the county-level canvass found, not counting Brookfield, a net gain of 117 for Prosser over the election-night numbers collated by the AP), they might be forced to have declared the entirety of Waukesha County incompetent to determine the affairs of the Kingdom of Dane. Tossing the entirety of Waukesha County would give Kloppenburg a 52,000-vote “lead”.

Any state-level appeal would probably be pointless on its own as it would first go to the Madison-based 4th District Court of Appeals. They would be expected to uphold whatever novel “judicial finding” the kangaroo court creates out of thin air to justify disenfranchising either an entire municipality or an entire county. At best, since either Justice Prosser would need to recuse himself or the seat would be vacant pending a final disposition, a further appeal to the Wisconsin Supreme Court would result in a 3-3 deadlock.

However, whatever novel “judicial finding” the kangaroo court would create out of thin air would almost certainly invoke an equal protection claim a federal court could latch onto. I would expect that, no later than the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, that claim would find a friendly judicial panel, and after tens of millions of dollars wasted under this scenario, the result would end up being what it is as of today – a Prosser victory.

The ball is in the Kloppenburg campaign’s court. I urge them to consider that, at the end of the day, they can’t win, and spare the state the pain and expense of a “by any means necessary” strategy.

Revisions/extensions (11:43 am 4/18/2011) – I swear that, while Kevin Binversie and I discussed the Butch Coolidge/Marcellus Wallace question, I didn’t crib from Kevin’s take (both his and mine are featured on this morning’s WisOpnion’s round-up). His close – “Because the worst fear the Kloppenburg legal team truly has, is not ‘losing’ a recount. It’s if Waukesha County is allowed to re-run its ballots through its machines again, and the numbers come out the same.”

Just as a reminder, if Kloppenburg opens the recount door, Prosser will be able to force a recount in any ward Klopenburg doesn’t have recounted before any judicial appeal. Given the last anybody heard of GAB’s investigation into Waukesha County was that the as-canvassed numbers from Brookfield were legitimate, one has to wonder if Kloppenburg wants to politically go down that road.

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