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.
Can the roll get any bigger? Yes, it can:
– Patrick McIlheran, the Journal Sentinel’s resident semi-conservative, makes an appearance.
– Frank Lasee, who tried to give us Cheddarheads some serious tax relief with both TABOR and the TPA, also rolls in.
It’s a good thing WordPress has a randomizer function for the roll.
Silent E is wondering whether Wisconsin’s version of Al Gore has conceded. Kathleen Falk hasn’t conceded yet, and depending on when the last county reports its results to the State Elections Board, she’ll have until 11/27 to do so – a candidate has to wait for the final canvas to be reported to file for a recall (due no later than 11/21), then he or she has 3 days to do so (since the state takes a 4-day weekend Thanksgiving week, that extends the deadline from Friday to the following Monday).
That got me digging around the SEB website, and while there isn’t any news from the Falk campaign, there were three recalls ordered in Assembly races (unofficial vote totals courtesy AP/JSOnline:
By way of comparsion, Falk lost 1,062,657 to 1,053,856 (0.42%).
Out of the 3 ordered recounts and one likely recount, the only one with a realistic chance of changing the result is the one in the 43rd. Along those lines, I wonder if there are 10 people in far southern Dane County, western Rock County, and the city/town of Whitewater that are regretting not voting right about now.
(H/T – Allahpundit)
Here is your chance to blow off some steam, check your eyes and the quality of your monitor, and try to figure out which of these 10 pictures are real and which ones have been digitally “enhanced”. AP got 9 of 10 right, I got 7, if you get less than 5, you a “punk-ass Adnan Hajj wannabe” (AP’s words), and if you drop below 3, you’re probably a Reuters employee.
One thing, don’t cheat by reading the comments there before taking the test (comments will be disabled on this post to prevent cheating).
Go to it, and good luck.
Dean has it, so go read and plow through those that have submitted.
Next week, it is going to be at Wigderson Library and Pub.
One more bit of news; the Conservative Cat has taken down his carnival submission form, so you’re down to two ways to submit – e-mail to badgercarnival – at – gmail – dot – com or head to the Blog Carnival submission page.
(H/T for the Tommy announcement – Fred)
Where, oh where has Ronald Reagan gone? The crop of “Republicans” that have announced a run for the Presidency so far, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Tommy Thompson do not exactly inspire me.
For you out-of-state readers who only know Thompson as an invisible HHS Secretary, he has exactly two conservative accomplishments to his name in his 15 years as governor; welfare reform and school choice (that’s right, both of those actually started in Wisconsin before the national party noticed). Other than that, he is a big-spending social moderate-to-liberal who views conservatives with such distain that he had the “Republican” Party of Wisconsin essentially abandon Mark Neumann in his run against Russ Feingold in 1998.
Of course that’s 2 more than I can think of for McCain, and one more than I can for Giuliani.
Here’s the increased “fee” schedule proposed by the Department of Transportation:
Those tax hikes, which will dump $208 million into the coffers over the next 2 years, will allegedly go to “critical” road needs such as road maintenance and rebuilding the Vote Fraud/FIB Highway between Illinois and Milwaukee. More likely, it, like the $600+ million raided by Jim “Craps” Doyle (WEAC/Potawatomi-For Sale) in the last budget, will go to contributors of Doyle.
Further, they want to increase the fees for the 8-year driver’s licenses from $24 to $34, a 42% increase. Supposedly, that $22 million over the next 2 years will go toward federal requirements to make the licenses a more secure form of ID.
Look for the ‘Rat-infested State Senate to propose a return to the automatic increase in gasoline taxes next year as well. Yipee; we can be COMPLETELY hostile to drivers now.
“Thank” you, Mary Panzer and Dale Schultz, for not taking any action to protect the taxpayers.
If you’re not reading these folks, you should be:
– PeteRepublic
– Slublog
I’ve also done what, for me is a major revamp of the roll (I removed a deactivated blog).
Jim "Craps" Doyle (WEAC/Potawatomi-For Sale), as quoted by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in July 2005 – ""˜The result of the freeze that I will sign will be that the average property tax on the average home will not go up at all next year, and will actually go down $5"² in December 2006."
County Board Supervisors Gerry Broderick, Toni Clark, Elizabeth Coggs-Jones, Lynne De Bruin, Marina Dimitrijevic, Chairman Lee Holloway, Willie Johnson Jr, Michael Mayo Sr., Ryan McCue, Richard Nyklewicz Jr., Roger Quindel, John Weishan Jr., Peggy West and James White to the taxpayers of Milwaukee County – A 3.6% levy increase this year AND a guaranteed 5% levy increase next year because of irresponsible spending is just all right with us. PPPHHHHTTTTHHHHH!!!!!!
I want my $5, Doyle. I didn’t get it from the city of Oak Creek, the Oak Creek/Franklin School District, Milwaukee County because of the board, Milwaukee Area Technical College, or Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District. I highly doubt I’m getting it from the Southeast Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission. That leaves it to come out of your pocket.
For the rest of you, this tax anti-freeze ends this year, and thanks to you dumbshits in the 5th, 21st, 23rd and 31st Senate Districts and to the 53% of Wisconsin that are too stupid to know a corrupt politician when you see one, there won’t even be this standing betwee the wallets of the taxpayers of Wisconsin and the vaccuum cleaners that have property tax levying authority. Hello, double-digit tax increases.
Let the recalls begin anew.
Too many hat-tips to dole out, so I’ll just choose one at “random” – Michelle
Trent Lott is back in power. By a 25-24 vote, he edged out Lamar Alexander for minority whip, the #2 position in the Senate.
Personally, I would have left the position open like they did between 1937 and 1946. Alexander just proved how worthless he is at getting votes, the main job of a whip. While Lott was a moderately-successful whip back in 1995-1996, he has been caving to the ‘Rats ever since he assumed the “leadership” position. Just a couple of gems from Lott:
I don’t know if there’s enough Maalox in the world to fix this bleeding ulcer.
Put SiteMeter and the TTLB Ecosystem on here.
(H/T – Michelle Malkin)
Reuters is reporting that RNC general-chair-to-be Sen. Mel Martinez (RINO-FL) will not be an “attack dog” (note; the excerpt is rearranged slightly to move Sen. Martinez’ quote to the top to replace Reuters’ summary of that quote) –
“One of the things that I made clear as I discussed this job role with the president is I was not going to be an attack dog, and I don’t intend to, and I wasn’t asked to be one,” (Sen. Mel Martinez) told reporters at the White House.
President (George W.) Bush gave Martinez his blessing at a meeting in the Oval Office, calling the Cuban-born senator an American success story.
“He’s going to be an excellent spokesman for the Republican Party,” Bush said. “He’ll be a person who’ll be able to carry our message as we go into an important year in 2008.”
Two comments:
JSOnline’s DayWatch – Mike Huebsch is the new Assembly Speaker and Jeff Fitzgerald is the new majority leader.
Will have more thoughts later.
First things first, if you haven’t seen Patrick’s video of Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker’s veto announcement, go do so. I was there, and I doubt the TV news will do the announcement justice.
Next, realize that, if the County Board overrides this veto and refuses to have a “do over” on the budget, here’s the cold, hard facts that will bite those of us who live in Milwaukee County:
The County Board did pass this budget by a vote of 14-5 (with my supervisor, Paul Cesarz, among the 5). However, we can possibly sway three members of that majority to do the budget over: Ryan McCue, Lynne De Bruin, and Roger Quindel. Upholding this veto will give both the taxpayers and the county another chance to get the budget right by everybody.
There is not a moment to lose. The County Board will vote on overriding the veto of the budget tomorrow. Get a hold of your supervisor, especially if you live in the districts of the three I listed above, by callling 278-4222.
Finally decided that the “live preview” much like on sites such as From Where I Sit and Spotted Horse 2 was too good to keep off the site. I’ve gone “minimalist” on my install of Softius’ Comment Live Preview, so you won’t see the “you say” line like you do over at the 2 blogs I mentioned.
In case you haven’t heard the news, Scott Walker is now going to veto the entire County Board “budget” later today. While he did find a way to bring the levy back to a zero increase through line-item vetoes, he couldn’t solve the pair of time bombs Lee Holloway and company threw in through the line-item veto pen – the re-adding and partial funding of the jobs Walker wanted to outsource like janitors for a few million (if memory serves, and it’s a bit hazy, somewhere around $6 million), and a shortfall in the pension funding caused by the board’s rejection of bonding the obligation and still taking the savings (again, if the hazy memory serves, right around $13 million).
For those of you with a sense of Bruce Lee films, this quote from Enter the Dragon is definitely appropriate – “What was that? An exhibition? We need emotional content. Try again, this time with feeling.” I can easily see Walker saying that.
(H/T – Free Republic)
KGO, the ABC affiliate in San Francisco, has the story of a brand new treatment to grow new blood vessels using one’s own stem cells. Very promising stuff, and the best part is no humans were sacrificed in the production of yet another non-embryonic stem cell breakthrough.
Just got back from the Oak Creek Council adoption (6-0) of the budget. They think they’re soooo good for “limiting” the levy increase to 3.97% (or $692,742 on a budget that was just shy of $17.5 million last year) and the rate increase to $0.05/$1,000 of assessed value (0.70%). Before I get to just how unprepared Mayor Dick Bolender and company were for the public hearing held just before the adoption of the project, there are a few items from the memo from the preparers of the budget (Finance Manager RoseAnn Underberg, City Clerk/Comptroller Beverly Buretta and Administrator Patrick DeGrave) to the mayor, common council and the taxpayers (yes, they were listed in that order):
Now, onto the public hearing (for which I was a wee bit tardy):
– The person at the podium when I got there was Arlen Degner, the old guard in the anti-tax movement here in Oak Creek. He kept hammering home that the taxes are going up faster than our ability to pay them and lambasted the mayor and company for not trying to make the hard choices we who pay their salaries have to make. Like clueless dolts, they didn’t understand.
They also don’t understand that it’s a combination of the tax rate and the assessed value that determines the bottom line; the city administrator (I think; there wasn’t a placard in front of him saying who he was) tried to spin the very-visible increase by saying if Oak Creek had reassessed this year, the rate would “only” have been $6.22/$1,000 of assessed value. Only one problem; the average assessment would have gone up the equal amount to keep the bottom line at the same increase.
– Next up, Mark Verhalen, the new guard in said anti-tax movement. He pointed out that Oak Creek’s government is so much less efficient than Franklin’s. Hizzoner appeared to never have heard of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, Foeckler trotted out some meaningless bit about taxes being higher in Franklin (attributable to less industry/commerce, a situation that is changing rapidly), and my new alderwoman Ann Lampe huffed and puffed that because Franklin doesn’t have a freeway running through it, they don’t have the safety needs of Oak Creek (funny, last time I checked, the OCPD didn’t patrol I-94, and Franklin had more land area and people).
– Last up, one of my old neighbors, who got confused by a part that was added to the memo referenced above, namely the levy increase for the Taj Mahal police station mortgage and the add-on part about the levy increase being a bit less than expected because of the closing of a pair of TIF Districts. Hizzoner and company didn’t offer any sort of explanation.
Say Doyle, can I get my $5 directly from you because I sure as hell am not getting it from the city of Oak Creek, the Oak Creek/Franklin School District, MMSD or MATC? The only hope left is the county. Scott Walker is going to try to deliver a levy freeze (be there at KEI tomorrow at noon for the veto party), but we need 2 supervisors (neither of them mine) to remember who pays their salaries and not who pays their campaign bills; Lynne DeBruin and Ryan McCue.
– Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi is appeasing the moonbat wing of her party by attempting to install John “Cut-and-Run” Murtha as House Majority Leader. I hope you in the middling are paying attention; the Dem “moderates” you elected turned the House much further to the left than you hoped.
– A ChiCom sub popped up within 5 miles of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk during exercises. While Bill Gertz is trying to claim that it shadowed the battle group, I believe it more likely that the PLAN knew where they would be, had the sub go there ahead of the group and just wait. A diesel-electric sub is nigh impossible to detect on passive sonar when it is making bare steerage. In either case, it’s quite disturbing.
– Russ Feingold announced that, contrary to plans, he won’t be seeking the Democrat nomination for President. While the local newspaper fishwrap bird cage liner paint catcher is deeply saddened, Hillary finds the road open with one less person to take to Fort Marcy Park. Al Qaeda’s favorite Senator, however, will be refocused on the Senate, at least until Clinton asks him to be the VP nominee.
– Good news/bad news on the college football front (more-fully covered at TheWisconsinSportsBar) – Wisconsin moves up to #9 in the latest BCS rankings to become BCS bowl-eligible, but we discover that the BCS bowls can’t take 3 teams from the Big 10. My answer; crush ’em, Ohio State, as the Rose Bowl (which will have the pick of the litter) is expected to take a Big 10 team to replace the Big 10 champ/BCS #1 and Michigan has gone to the Roses more recently than the Badgers, who have gone more-recently than the Buckeyes.
– Speaking of bad news, it’s all over in Hen¢AR. Jimmie Johnson took 2nd at Phoenix to take an almost-insurmountable 63-point lead over Matt Kenseth. They’re cheering in Daytona as they won’t have to alter either the Chase or the points as a whole next year.
– Crow time; after only 9 games, the Packers have matched their win total from last year. Even more shocking, they got win #4 against a team that many people (not me though) considered a challenger to the Bears, and who already got 4 wins.
No time to recap, no time for witty comebacks. Just your winners against the spread as we go back to a full slate:
Green Bay (+5) @ Minnesota
San Francisco (+6.5) @ Detroit
Kansas City (+1) @ Miami
Houston @ Jacksonville (-10.5)
San Diego (-1) @ Cincinnati – throw in under-48.5
Cleveland @ Atlanta (-8.5)
Baltimore (-7.5) @ Tennessee
Buffalo (+13) @ Indianapolis
Washington @ Philadelphia (-8)
NY Jets @ New England (-10.5)
Denver (-9) @ Oakland – go over 33.5
New Orleans (+6) @ Pittsburgh
St Louis (+3) @ Seattle
Dallas (-7) @ Arizona
Chicago (+1) @ NY Giants
Tampa Bay @ Carolina (-10)
Thank you for providing and protecting the freedoms we enjoy. Whether you served in wartime or peace, you are the protectors of the Republic.
Thank you.
Josh Schroeder makes the case for Dean Kaufert for Assembly Speaker. Owen’s made the case against (previously linked).
It sure looks like conservatism and Republicanism are dead in Wisconsin either way. Damn.
Just received this from the Walker folks –
NEWS ALERT
The Milwaukee County Board passed a budget that increased the tax levy by over $9 million. County Executive Walker will announce his vetoes on Tuesday, November 14th. Details from the County Executive’s Office are below:
Location:
KEI Landscaping Company
824 E. Rawson Avenue
Oak CreekDate: Tuesday, November 14
Time: 12 noonIf you wish to attend please R.S.V.P. to (414) 278-4930
I’m THERE!
Revisions/extensions (6:43 pm 11/10/2006) – Scott has more on the budget-busting the county board did over at Boots and Sabers.
Owen confirms that Mike Huebsch will be the next Assembly speaker.
I knew there was a reason why I didn’t like the choice; Huebsch was one of those that sought to ram corn-a-hole down our throats. On the other hand, he didn’t appear in my tax rogues gallery, so there might be some hope yet.
Revisions/extensions (3:05 pm/3:15 pm 11/10/2006) – JSOnline’s DayWatch reports that Dean Kaufert has tossed his hat in the ring. Dunno about his leadership style, but he avoided both the corn-a-hole ram and the tax rogues gallery. The ONLY things he did right were to avoid those two bellweather votes. Owen has the details on how Kaufert has been anything but conservative. I should’ve known better than to trust anything from the Fox Valley.
If only Charlie had written this piece over at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute before the election, we might not be facing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (assuming, of course, Hillary Clinton lets him have that) and State Senate Majority Leader Judy Robson. Of course, it’s more likely he would have been written off as a doom-and-gloomer. The money quotes:
At a deeper level, it exposed the larger flaw of "Limbaughism": Conservatism is not the same as populism.
By its nature conservatism flies in the face of popular ideas and culture; because it has firm, occasionally hard-nosed principles, it battles the fierce headwinds of both fashion and history.
Arguing from economic principles is not always easy. Arguing facts and logics is not as popular as arguing from feelings and emotions. Traditional morality is a far less easy sell than the culture of "whatever."
In education, "most people," may not choose higher standards or rigorous accountability measures over gold stars and happy faces. It is harder to explain why free markets create wealth than it is to pander to workers displaced by
global competition. It is an uphill fight to persuade workers that the minimum wage is not in their interest.Those arguments, of course, can be won, and Ronald Reagan and others showed that they could be embraced by electoral majorities. But the case was made by conservatives who understood the odds against them.
It goes very well with what Ronald Reagan said after the 1974 debacle.
I don’t think so, but there is an interesting take on this from former Milwaukee Sentinel political reporter Ken Lamke (H/T – Charlie). Let’s take Lamke’s arguments one at a time:
Either Mark Green, this year’s losing GOP gubernatorial candidate, or Scott Walker would have benefitted from winning a contested GOP primary.
Voters give a primary winner a real boost for the general election — as opposed to the boost obtained from merely running ahead in a poll, for example. Winning an election is real.
In addition, a primary in the out party prevents the incumbent, in this case Doyle, from going negative against his opponent until after the primary, simply because he doesn’t know who’s going to win the primary. Either Green or Walker would have been spared five months of negative Doyle TV ads had there been a primary.
Ring-a-ding-ding. With an active primary, we would’ve been spared the summer of Doyle smearing Green with absolutely no response. On the other hand, this fight would have caused the winner’s campaign funds to be completely drained, and that post-primary boost would have been completely evaporated with the inability to counter Doyle’s post-primary campaign. See the attorney general’s race; Kathleen Falk ran out of money temporarily after knocking off Peg Lautenschlager, which let JB Van Hollen successfully define heras a no-prosecute anti-business suit-filer. Despite hitching her wagon to Doyle’s and running a November Slime Surprise, she was one of the few Dems that lost.
I believe Walker would have beaten Green in a GOP primary. Walker himself ill (sic) believes it. He dropped out only because he thought he wouldn’t have enough money after the primary to beat Doyle.
If I remember the conversations at Drinking Right with Walker correctly (feel free to correct me, Scott), Walker thought that the fight would leave the winner, whether it be himself or Green, with no money left to beat Doyle.
But look at Walker’s advantages over Green as a general election candidate:
- Walker would have held down Doyle’s 62 percent margin in Democratic Milwaukee County, which Walker has carried twice as county executive. Walker might even have beaten Doyle in Milwaukee County.
Walker might have shaved 1-2 points (roughly 3,000-6,500), but no more because there is so much straight-ticket voting. Remember, county executive is a non-partisan position, while governor is a partisan one. That is why David Clarke, who does not belong to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, ran as a Dem.
- Walker’s anti-tax message would have been more effective than Green’s. Walker has never proposed a tax increase in six county budgets.
Taxes as an issue flat-out failed on Tuesday. I’ve already outlined how it failed.
- Walker would have been immune from the Doyle attacks tying Congressman Green to the mess in Washington.
Those attacks were predicated on getting the State Elections Board to reverse 30 years of policy. I am certain that Doyle would have found some way to slime Walker, likely using the Legislature Caucus scandal against Walker.
- And Walker would have done much better than Green among the anti-gay marriage amendment voters. About 280,000 people voted for both the anti-gay marriage amendment AND at the same time voted for Doyle, who opposed the amendment. The socially conservative Walker, the son of a preacher, would have allied himself with the anti-gay marriage amendment to a much greater degree than Green did. Many of those anti-gay marriage/Doyle voters — socially conservative Democrats — would have backed Walker. They have in Milwaukee County.
Again, the backing of Walker has been in non-partisan elections. Like county executive, and more-importantly, unlike the governor’s race, the DOMA amendment was not affected in the least by straight-ticket voting. I doubt that much more than 50,000 of those bifurcated voters would have gone over to Walker, not nearly enough to overcome Doyle’s margin of victory.
It also ignored the fact that there are two “Republican” parties in Wisconsin; the southeast Wisconsin party made up primarily of conservatives and the “Republican” Party of Wisconsin made up primarily of outstate liberals. The latter has a visceral hatred for conservatives, especially SE Wisconsin conservatives, that is arguably greater than their hatred of the Democrats. While Green suffered heavily among the outstaters because of his chasing of the SE Wisconsin vote, Walker would have fared worse. That would have wiped out the gains Walker got from Milwaukee and DOMA.
Bonus – Answer to Charlie’s question – the Republicans did not pick up a single Democrat seat in the governor’s mansions, the Senate or the House, incumbent or otherwise. The closest they got was in Georgia’s 12th Congressional, but the Pubbie fell several hundred votes short.
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