No Runny Eggs

The Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza reports that, in the aftermath of Sen. Robert Byrd’s death, Secretary of State Natalie Tennant announced the replacement appointed by governor Joe Manchin will serve until after the 2012 election. The statute in question (§3-10-3) reads (emphasis added):

Any vacancy occurring in the office of secretary of state, auditor, treasurer, attorney general, commissioner of agriculture, United States senator, judge of the supreme court of appeals or in any office created or made elective to be filled by the voters of the entire state, judge of a circuit court or judge of a family court is filled by the governor of the state by appointment. If the unexpired term of a judge of the supreme court of appeals, a judge of the circuit court or judge of a family court is for less than two years or if the unexpired term of any other office named in this section is for a period of less than two years and six months, the appointment to fill the vacancy is for the unexpired term. If the unexpired term of any office is for a longer period than above specified, the appointment is until a successor to the office has timely filed a certificate of candidacy, has been nominated at the primary election next following such timely filing and has thereafter been elected and qualified to fill the unexpired term. Proclamation of any election to fill an unexpired term is made by the governor of the state and, in the case of an office to be filled by the voters of the entire state, must be published prior to the election as a Class II-0 legal advertisement in compliance with the provisions of article three, chapter fifty-nine of this code and the publication area for the publication is each county of the state. If the election is to fill a vacancy in the office of judge of a circuit court or judge of a family court, the proclamation must be published prior to the election as a Class II-0 legal advertisement in compliance with the provisions of article three, chapter fifty-nine of this code and the publication area for such publication is each county in the judicial or family court circuit.

The certificate-of-candidacy period was between January 11 and January 30. Further, there was a court case in 1994 (H/T – Hotline via Allahpundit) that affirms the certificate-of-candidacy requirement.

I suppose I should mention that all involved in the current situation are Democrats seeking to keep the seat in their hands at a time when the voting populace seems ready, willing and able to remove them from power. As Smitty said, “The good news in all this is that, since the ruling falls in favor of the Democratic Party, we’re spared endless breast-beating about the crushing of voter expression, Republican Party thugger in general, and Rascal Rove vitriol in particular.” One could only imagine what the presstitutes would have said if it were Republicans that were desperate to keep their virtual supermajority in the Senate.

Nearly every time Hamas steps up its rocket barrage of Israel I hear a defender of Israel, usually someone from the Right, explain Israel’s response with an analogy similar to this:

Listen, if Mexico were lobbing rockets into Tucson, don’t you think the United States would retaliate?

I think most right minded folks, even a majority on the Left would say, “Yeah, we would and should protect ourselves.”  Yeah, that’s what I used to think but, not any more.

Last Wednesday, the US Fish and Wildlife Service closed off access to over 3,000 acres of Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge.  It wasn’t because of wildfires.  It wasn’t because of floods.  It wasn’t even because some rare insect, rodent or bird had been spotted and they were trying to protect it.  No, 3,000 acres of U.S. soil have been closed because violence from Mexican drug and human smugglers has become so severe that it is no longer safe for U.S. residents.

Without one shot being fired by the world’s last remaining superpower, the US has effectively ceeded 3,000 acres to Mexico.

While it’s obvious that President Obama has little knowledge or even interest in effective international relations, I would think that at the very least, his Chicago instincts would kick in in this situation.  Under rules of the Chicago Way, any ceding of territory or turf is considered a sure sign of weakness.  And, we all know that President Obama is not weak.  Apparently in this case, he just hasn’t figured out whose ass to kick!

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI, and my Congresscritter) and his fellow House Budget Republican members launched the Budget Boondoggle Award a couple years ago to carry on the tradition of William Proxmire’s Golden Fleece Award. Today, they turned their attention to the proposed $20 million Office of Livable Communities, with a stated goal of making car-less hyper-urban communities with promises of federal money that simply isn’t there.

It sounds a lot like FDR’s Resettlement Administration. The RA, and its predecessor Subsistence Homsesteads Division of the Department of the Interior, had a rather spotty record in attempting to set up socialist communes. For every community that survived until it could be privatized like Greendale, there was an abject failure like Hickory Ridge, Virginia.

(H/T – Owen)

There is a piece of legislation called the DISCLOSURE Act (H.R. 5175 on the Congressional calendar) that would, among other things, require disclosure of all donations to corporations, non-profit organizations, and unions of at least $600 to an account used for campaigning within 120 days (a new extension in and of itself) of an election (whether the entity uses a segregated political account or a mixed-use account), as well as all donations to corporations/unions of at least $6,000 regardless of purpose if said entity particpiates in campaigning.

Side note – while many are saying that this doesn’t apply to unions, that non-application, at least as of the May 25 mark-up, is a function of the way the triggers are written rather than an express exemption. Unions are already required to segregate political funds, and I don’t know of too many unions that take either $600 for that segregated political fund or $6,000 for total dues.

In order to grease the skids for shutting up the less-connected, Politico reported that the National Rifle Association negotiated a deal with the Democrats to exempt itself, and contrary to Democrat claims, other groups like AARP and the Humane Society, from the donation-reporting requirements. Specifically, the deal would “exempt organizations that have more than 1 million members, have been in existence for more than 10 years, have members in all 50 states and raise 15 percent or less of their funds from corporations”.

Revisions/extensions (5:18 pm 5/19/2010) – There’s some rather good, learned takes that are better than mine out there. First up, there’s a whole series from Jim Geraghty. Then, there’s Melissa Clouthier, who linked to this missive. DaTechguy compared and contrasted PA-12 with Massachusetts. Stacy McCain filed a back-home closing dispatch after spending a lot of shoe leather in the district. Go read their takes as well.

In case you missed the toplines from yesterday’s primaries (and special election for the seat formerly held by John Murtha), Arlen “Scottish Law” Specter (D-PA) is now a lame-duck Senator, Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) is headed for a runoff in her primary, Rand Paul knocked off Trey Grayson in Kentucky’s Republican Senate primary, and the Democrats hung onto the House seat formerly held by John Murtha. Let’s see if I can make any sense out of all that.

The first two items are actually the same phenomenon – After riding the nutroot wave to power, Barack Obama has become The Establishment, and the nutroots are as anti-Establishment as ever. When old Scottish Law became Specter the Defector (credit BobNoxious’ mom for that one), Obama and the establishment in the Pennsylvania Democrat Party embraced him. Joe Stestak ran as the “real” Democrat, and won going away.

Meanwhile, Blanche Lincoln, despite voting (or perhaps because she voted) with Harry Reid and Barack Obama, couldn’t pull 50%+1 to avoid a runoff with nutroot-approved Lt. Gov. Bill Haller. I’m still waiting for the presstitute exposés on how the nutroots have taken over the Democrat Party at the state level.

That brings me to the mixed-bag main events, ones that may have implications for Wisconsin. The first is the Paul trouncing of Grayson. Paul wholly-embraced the Tea Party movement, with full reciprocity. Meanwhile, Grayson clung solely to the establishment that tried to install him. The results weren’t even close, even though (or more-likely because) it was a closed primary limited to Republican party members.

I’m sure the Mark Neumann camp would like to make hay of that result. However, they already botched the attempt to tie themselves to the Tea Party movement; while Neumann waited until February 2010, a full year after the movement began and 7 months after he entered the race, to publicly reach out to Tea Party-related groups, Scott Walker was out there early and often.

That brings me to what is being spun as the “Big Dem Win” – Mark Critz’s 7.6-point win over Tim Burns in the special election for Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional district, the seat formerly held by John Murtha. While on the surface, it is a big win, the fact that normal primary elections happened at the same time means one can quantify just how unpopular even a Dem who ran away from the Dem agenda, as Critz did, is. In the 3-person Democrat primary for the full-term fall election, just under 81,000 Democrats participated, with just under 46,000 Republicans participating in their 2-person primary (also won by Burns), which made for a participation margin of D+27.6 points. In the special election, 10,000 of those who voted in the Democrat primary did not vote for Critz, 15,000 who did not vote in the Republican primary voted for Burns, with 3,000 voting for the Libertarian candidate. That still leaves a 20-point swing away from the Dem column and to the GOP column.

There were 22,000 23,000 (forgot to round up) votes in the Democrat primary that did not go to Critz. Somehow, I doubt 10,000 of them voted in the Democrat primary, then turned around to vote for Burns in the special election, so I’ll take the scenario that those 10,000 simply didn’t vote in the special election. Even with that assignment, Critz would have only won by 14 points, a 13.6-point swing to the Republicans.

Neither Steve Kagen (the Dem Congressman in the 8th District) nor Julie Lassa (the Dem state senator who is the anointed candidate for the 7th Congressional seat being vacated by Dave Obey) can be too happy with that bit of math. The 8th is considered a “swing” district, even after the last 2 elections, while the 7th isn’t nearly as Democratic as Pennsylvania’s 12th. Moreover, neither Kagen (who proudly proclaimed he was one of the architechts of PlaceboCare) nor Lassa (who voted for Healthy-and-Depopulated Wisconsin back in 2007) can credibly run as anything other than Huge Government Liberal Democrats.

According to the CMA Soverign Risk Monitor, California is perceived to be the eight most likely government to default on their debt.  While countries like Venezuela and Argentina are worse, Iraq with it’s continuing challenges of maintaining a stable government, is actually ranked better.

Meanwhile, California is wrestling with a $19.1 B as in Billion shortfall. Arnold, am I political fish or fowl, Schwarzenegger, has decided he’s fish in this debate and has called for an end to the California welfare system. In what has become expected, trite and completely in line with leadership shown in Washington, the Democrats, who control both houses in California, have said, “nope” and are chasing a plan to increase taxes.

In what has become a rare event, I applaud Schwarzenegger for calling out reality on this topic. California has been one of the hardest hit states during this recession. Increasing taxes will not only not close the budget gap but will exacerbate the economic challenges, likely making anywhere in Michigan a more appealing place for business development. Where I disagree wtih Arnold is that he continues to attempt to be a moderate and walk both sides of the fence.

Less than a week ago, Arnold stuck his nose into Arizona’s business. He derided the recently passed immigration laws and joked that he would likely be deported under the new Arizona law.

Estimates have California with over 2 million illegal immigrants, over twice the number of the next largest illegal population estimated in Texas. While you may say, “yeah, but they have a lot of other people,” you’d be right. But, that estimate also says that over 6 out of every 100 people are illegal immigrants in CA and the is over 3 times the national average.

Depending upon the study you choose to use, illegal immigrants cost the country somewhere between $40 and $80 billion each year. While the estimates I used earlier don’t reflect the total numbers of illegals believed to be in the US, it does likely represent the distribution across the states. That estimate showed that approximately 1/3 of the illegal immigrants in the US were in California. Let’s see…1/3 of $40 billion is about $13.3B. 1/3 of $80 billion is about $27 billion.

A quick suggestion for you Arnold, if you want to deal with your budget problem deal with the problem and not the symptom. If you want to fix the budget via an overhaul of the welfare system, you should start by fixing the problem that is causing your welfare problem to be so big…Illegal Immigration. An apology to the people of the State of Arizona would be a good place to start!

If you pay attention to financial news, you probably know the federal government ran a $82.7 billion deficit in the month of April. As JammieWearingFool notes, it’s a record-setting 19th consecutive month of monthly deficits, and only the 13th of the past 56 Aprils to post a montly deficit.

Before I get to the “how much worse”, I do have to note that the government did “accelerate” some payments from May 1 to April 30. However, that is only somewhere south of $19 billion in additional outlays, and only reduces the “natural” monthly deficit to $64 billion (give or take a couple billion).

The first two parts of the “how much worse is it” comes from Tom Blumer. Do you remember what I said about April historically being a surplus month for the feds? In April 2007, the monthly surplus was $178 billion, and in April 2008, the monthly surplus was $159 billion. Compare that to the $21 billion deficit in April 2009 and this April’s $83 billion deficit.

That flows into the second part from Tom – tax revenues are still cratering, both from before the start of The Great Recession (soon to be named The Greatest Depression) and from last year. Total federal receipts for April are down 36.1% from April 2007, and down 7.9% from April 2009.

On that note, the best instantaneous measure of income generation is, at least until the effects of PlaceboCare distort it, the portion of the FICA/SECA tax that goes to the Hospital Insurance portion of Medicare. It taxes every dollar earned at the same percentage, and despite an extra Friday, the FICA (withheld) take was 2.6% lower in April 2010 than it was in April 2009, and the SECA (that’s from the first-quarter 2010 quarterly estimated payments plus any unpaid portion from 2009) take was 4.0% lower in April 2010 than it was in 2009. The combined drop from April 2009 to April 2010 is 3.0%. If this is a “recovery”, then it’s not only a jobless one, but a payless one.

The third part comes from Karl Denninger via Dad29. The national debt increased not by $83 billion, but by $175 billion. Karl caught the usual suspect – the various “trust funds” buying more Treasuries.

There, however, is a second part, noted by Fox Business at the time and fallen into the memory hole. Back in February, the Treasury announced it was “recapitalizing” something called the Supplementary Financing Program. It was originally a “temporary” infusion of $300 billion of cash from the Treasury to the Federal Reserve back in September 2008 (that’s right, pre-TARP) to allow the Federal Reserve to do stuff like prop up AIG. Since that cash was funded with Treasury securities, it became a “victim” of the bump-up against the debt ceiling, and had dropped to $5 billion by February. Since Timothy “TurboTax” Geithner, the architect of the SFP when he was head of the New York Federal Reserve, liked the no-strings-attached slush fund so much, as soon as the debt ceiling was raised, he decided to bring it back to $200 billion between the end of February and the end of April. I wonder who the next AIG/GM is – the Communists in the Executive Branch are already planning for their next corporate takeover.

The “cute” trick is that while all that money came from the sale of bonds and remains there because said bonds are being rolled over, since it’s “cash”, the amount available to the Federal Reserve is counted as part of the Treasury’s “Operating Cash” and thus offsets the debt issued to create it. Specifically for April, $75 billion went out the door that way.