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.

July 27, 2011

Boehner gets rolled (again), or comparing apples to apples

by @ 13:20. Filed under Budget Chop, Politics - National.

You’re going to see a whole lot of bloviation on how the Congressional Budget Office scored the Harry Reid plan as reducing the growth of the debt far more than the already-scrapped-for-retooling John Boehner plan. What you won’t see nearly as much of is how Reid and the LeftSteamMedia are able to get away with it.

Before I give you the tale of the tape in table form, I’ll explain that it has almost everything to do with the spending on the Global War on Terror (or whatever it’s being called nowadays at the White House). The CBO, in its baseline, assumes that spending on the GWOT will continue to increase at the rate of inflation through the end of FY2021, the end of its 10-year estimation period. That, between FY2012 and FY2021, would be (give or take rounding) $1,590 billion. Both the White House and the House of Representatives, in their budgets, reduced the amount of that spending to $547 billion over that same period, or a $1,043 billion reduction from the CBO baseline. Since the House already passed those cuts in budget form, Boehner told the CBO to not consider that spending in the baseline.

Meanwhile, the Senate has not passed a budget for either FY2011 or FY2012. Harry Reid is using this as the opportunity to effectively sign on to that GWOT spending plan, with a $1,044 billion reduction in GWOT spending relative to the CBO baseline (effectively a rounding error compared to the White House/House of Representatives plan). Because this is also not a true budget, Reid did not specify which year or years those cuts would need to be made, which is something both the White House and the House of Representatives did. Even though the CBO separated the raw effect of the cuts in spending on the GWOT from the “cuts” elsewhere in the discretionary budget, they did so in a clumsy way. Therefore, I decided to redo the first and third tables from each CBO summary to put the two plans back on the same playing field.

There is one more thing to keep in mind while looking at the charts – there is supposed to be another $1.8 trillion in “cuts” from a bipartisan commission in the Boehner plan that is, due to the lack of ANY detail, not scored by the CBO. Likewise, there’s a bipartisan commission in the Reid plan that is supposed to keep the deficit at or below 3% of GDP, which is, in the quick take, a bunch of Bravo Sierra. I’ll get back to that after the charts.

Note: There was a rather big error on the first chart I had up. As I did not save it in Excel, I decided to pull it entirely rather than spend time reworking something where a third of the data has been rendered moot.

Next, the net effect of the duelling pieces of legislation on the deficit (which includes Reid’s further cuts on farm subsidies and additional revenues from “re-auctioning” of various radio frequencies). I had to re-estimate the effect of the reduced debt service because that was not broken down by GWOT versus non-GWOT spending/revenue changes on the Reid proposal, and that re-estimation, bumped back up against the CBO’s estimate from House proposal, was low by $5 billion (again, click for the full-sized table):

Boehner managed to back-load things rather badly the first time around, and he got schooled by Reid even once the spending on the Global War On Terror gets discounted, at least when the “scored” items are counted. However, that does not quite tell the whole story.

Remember what I said about the Reid commission to bring deficits down to 3% of GDP? If the extended-baseline from the CBO can be believed, the only two years of the next 10 that the deficit would be above 3% of GDP are FY2012 and FY2013. Since Congress is dealing with, or at least is supposed to be dealing with, the FY2012 appropriations process right now, I’ll assume the commission won’t be able to affect that massive deficit. FY2013’s deficit under the Reid plan would be scored at $592 billion, or a mere $100 billion less than the $492 billion that is 3% of the estimated $16,400 billion GDP.

Meanwhile, Boehner’s commission would have a hard $1,800 billion in additional deficit reductions to come up with. Even if one applied the usual Boehner-to-reality conversion rate, that would result in a much larger reduction in deficit than the Reid plan, at least assuming that the adjusted CBO extended-baseline scenario of $5,807 billion in deficits or the House budget scenario of $5,088 billion in deficits is anything near reality.

Revisions/extensions (1:23 pm 7/27/2011) – There’s more from Ed Morrissey, who somehow forgot that one plan raises the debt ceiling by about $0.9 trillion to get us barely into 2012 while the other raises it the $2.5 trillion Obama needs to get past November 2012.

R&E part 2 (6:56 pm 7/27/2011) – After what can only be described as a “minimum effort” (namely, a revision of FY2012 and FY2013 caps), Boehner Verison 1.0.1 does barely beat Reid 1.0. I won’t redo the graphics, but the bottom line is:

  • FY2012 discretionary spending change is -$25 billion from the adjusted baseline, $2 billion better than Reid’s plan
  • FY2012 net deficit change from the adjusted baseline is -$21 billion, $4 billion better than Reid’s plan
  • FY2013 discretionary spending change is -$47 billion, $1 billion better than Reid’s plan
  • FY2013 net deficit change (excluding debt service, which is a somewhat-shaky estimation) from the adjusted baseline is -$41 billion, $3 billion better than Reid’s plan
  • The subtotal net deficit change (again excluding debt service) is -$758 billion, $3 billion better than Reid’s plan

R&E part 3 – 8:46 am 7/29/2011) – I screwed up the math on the Memorandum portion of Table 1, affecting the CBO assumption for GWOT funding. I have pulled the chart.

Negotiating Against Yourself

by @ 10:41. Filed under Economy, Economy Held Hostage, Miscellaneous, Politics - National.

After a several week “government shutdown” in Minnesota the recently passed budget has been celebrated as a great success for the tea party and other conservatives. Rush Limbaugh himself heralded the announcement by Governor Mark Dayton that he would accept the Repubilcan’s proposal as “Dayton caves!”

Admittedly, there is much to like of the new Minnesota budget: The total package is a bit under $36B as compared to a projected need of $39B, there are legislative changes that will give greater leverage for school districts to negotiate with teacher unions and several that will help to reduce the acceleration of growth for future budgets.

Unfortunately, there are also some things in the new Minnesota budget that are not good. To get the agreement, Republicans agreed to some one time revenue in the form of bonding a settlement from cigarette companies and most offensive, putting off payment of approximately $700M committed to schools that will force the schools to borrow until they get paid.

I’m told that the Republican leadership wanted the final budget to be $34B. Unfortunately, rather than leaving themselves room for negotiating, their original offer to Governor Dayton and the Democrats was $34B. Leadership was concerned about the MSM and Democrat meme that they were “cutting spending” when in fact they were increasing it from the previous budget. They thought that by offering $34B, they would be seen as “reasonable” and not have to fight for their principles. They were wrong.

Dayton promptly vetoed the $34B budget and demanded that any new budget must have tax increases. It was fairly obvious that Dayton was expecting and planning for a state government shutdown. Rather than hold pat, the Republicans immediately began negotiating and their negotiations were focused on adding revenue to increase the budget beyond the $34B.

Dayton rebuffed all of the Republican attempts to find a “compromise” and caused the government to shut down. After nearly three weeks, Dayton announced that he would accept the Republican’s last offer and “caved.” Unfortunately, the “cave” was at a number much higher than the Republicans wanted the budget to be and paid for in part, with “accounting tricks.”

Some would call the final budget the result of compromise, I wouldn’t be among them. Unfortunately for Minnesota taxpayers, the final budget was a result of poor negotiating by Republican leadership. Had they begun their negotiation at a number lower than what they were willing to accept or if they had caused Dayton to make major concessions before they found “new revenue”, the outcome could have been much better. In my opinion, the Republican leadership in Minnesota made critical errors and negotiated more against themselves than they did the Democrats.

Why am I outlining in a Wisconsin based blog, what happened in Minnesota, especially since I no longer live there? Because, what happened in Minnesota is exactly what is happening with John Boehner and DC Republicans.

In April, Paul Ryan set out a detailed roadmap for dealing with budget deficits including methods to deal with ever increasing entitlement costs. At the time, John Boehner endorsed the Ryan plan saying:

“In order to move forward I think Paul Ryan has set the bar in terms of the kinds of targets we need to meet and the kind of serious effort that is required given the deficit we have. I fully support Paul Ryan’s budget, including on Medicare.”

The “Ryan Plan” passed the House but was voted down in the Senate.

Roll forward to July and Boehner supported “Cut, Cap and Balance,” a bill that didn’t have a detailed budget but did provide for a combination of budget cuts and a balance budget amendment in exchange for an increase in the debt ceiling. On the day the House voted on CCB, Boehner said:

…(CCB is) the most responsible thing that we can do to address our problems today, and to address our problems long term.

Cut, cap and balance was killed by the Senate.

After CCB, Boehner tried “the grand bargain” with President Obama. Reportedly, that would have had $4T of reductions….until Obama threw a hissy fit and left.

Now Boehner is trying a paltry $1.2T of cuts which have been scored by the CBO as only $850B in cuts.

Boehner is now on record with supporting at least four and maybe as many as five or six different plans for dealing with the budget and at least indirectly, the debt limit. Rather than standing on one of these plans, Boehner has spent the last 2 weeks negotiating with anyone who will talk to him, Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Bo the dog, to find a solution for raising the debt limit. Every negotiation he enters further undercuts his credibility and resolve (if he really had any) to the only two plans (Ryan or CCB) that actually deal with our current situation in a way that doesn’t simply kick the can for some additional period of time.

The effect of Boehner’s “negotiations” have been not one iota of change from the Democrats.  If anything, Obama has become more transfixed on raising taxes and Reid yelling “no” even louder.  With all of his “negotiations,” it turns out that the only negotiating Boehner has been doing is with h

I’ve said numerous times that Boehner is no conservative. Worse, I’m not sure he is a whole lot better than Barack Obama. Boehner is unable to determine what he stands for and is even less willing to stand for it once he determines what it is that he does stand for. Boehner has been in Washington too long and is too committed to being a participant in the dance that is Washington politics rather than fighting for the principles that he purports to hold.

Washington operates under the false assumption that doing something, anything is always better than doing nothing. Boehner’s proposal for a debt limit increase is worse than doing nothing. John Boehner is about to but the period at the end of the sentence that will head our country into history as a banana republic.

July 26, 2011

Interview with Kim Simac

by @ 7:33. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

Over the weekend, I traveled up to Lincoln County and caught up with Kim Simac, the Republican candidate in the recall election of Democrat Senator Jim Holperin in the 12th Senate District on August 16. Unlike the Democrat challengers to the 6 Republicans up for recall on August 9, Simac is still focused on the “trigger” of all the recalls – the budget repair law and the initial Democrat Senate response of fleeing the state for three weeks.

Simac is running her campaign as though it will decide which party controls the Senate for the next 17 months. Indeed, even before we got to the interview, a small business owner came up, and he and Simac had a rather lengthy discussion of how many barriers Wisconsin puts up to those who create their own paychecks. During that, he showed her (and me) all the licenses he has to maintain to be in business.

We finally got to the interview, which you can listen to by clicking here.

I’ll expand a bit on the taxes issue. Due to the nature of the Simacs’ businesses, much of their income arrives between spring and fall. With respect to property taxes, that means they avail themselves of the installment plan Vilas County and the town of Lincoln offer. With respect to income, as both personal and business income are reported on the same individual income tax forms, when money gets reinvested or there just isn’t that much money coming in, that means there isn’t a tax liability.

There is one more item from a mailer put out by “We Are Wisconsin”. I had thought that it would be nigh impossible to take 140 characters out of context, but that union front group managed to do it. Let’s review the entire tweet (with the part “We Are Wisconsin” chose to take in italics, though they did correct the typo in the original):

Stop the fraud and fix Medicare first! If we cannot do that then why should we invest more into a corrupt, loosing venture?

News flash – Medicare Part A, the Hospital Insurance part, is burning through its “Trust Fund” at a rate that puts exhaustion by 2024, or probably earlier if one believes the chief actuary. In 2010, CBS pegged Medicare fraud at $60 billion per year and termed it “…one of, if not the most profitable, crimes in America.”

July 21, 2011

Open Thread Thursday – Summer in the City edition

by @ 7:52. Filed under Open Thread Thursday.

If it’s Thursday, it’s time for wholly-expected “unexpected” bad news on the initial jobless claims front (this time up 10K from the upwardly-3K-revised previous week to 418K) as well as Open Thread Thursday. Since I don’t feel like being The Sweaty Guy, I’ll let you tell the gang what’s hot and what’s not. Maestro, music…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWXcjYNZais[/youtube]

Go to it.

July 20, 2011

Wisconsin Senate Recall Elections – Round 2 post-mortem

by @ 17:50. Filed under Elections, Politics - Wisconsin.

Yesterday over at Hot Air, I ruminated on what to look for out of the results from yesterday’s round of elections. There’s one bit of good and a whole boatload of ugly that came out of last night, including something I didn’t quite foresee that should shake my side to its core.

The one bit of good came from the 12th Senate district, where the number of votes for winner Kim Simac (11,301 votes according to the Associated Press) and Robert Lussow (7,767 votes) came very close to the 19,255 signatures that Simac and her group gathered to force the recall election of incumbent Democrat Jim Holperin. Among what can be fairly described as the “anybody but the incumbent” crowd, that 99% “retention” rate from the recall to the election is the second-best of any effort.

The percentages were not nearly as good in the 22nd Senate district, where the votes for winner Jonathan Steitz (5,981 votes, again according to the Associated Press) and Fred Ekornaas (3,369 votes) totaled under 55% of the 17,138 signatures gathered by the recall group. That is the worst “retention” effort of the bunch, even worse than Democrat Nancy Nusbaum’s 59% “retention” rate last week or David VanderLeest’s utter failure against Sen. Dave Hansen in the 30th last night, with a 71% “retention” rate.

That leads me to the 30th Senate District. The 66% (once write-ins are considered, something the Associated Press did not track) of the vote Hansen received went above the 65% “trouble” level I set based on a DailyKos/PPP poll that had Hansen beating VanderLeest 62%-34%.

More troubling than the percentage is the raw number of votes Hansen received. Special elections, which is what a recall election is, are “turnout” elections. The 22,052 votes Hansen received is nearly 88% of the 25,192 votes fellow Democrat Tom Barrett received in the gubernatorial election last November. It is also greater than the number of votes either Supreme Court Justice David Prosser (20,536) or challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg (18,706) received in April, and far greater than the 15,540 signatures VanderLeest’s group gathered to force the recall election.

I toyed with the idea of titling this “Big Trouble in Little Suamico” because the results from that town in Oconto County and the 30th Senate District perfectly illustrates the current enthusiasm gap. In November, now-Governor Scott Walker beat Barrett 1,115 to 554. In April, Prosser beat Kloppenburg 549-348. Yesterday, Hansen beat VanderLeest 520-385.

That is not, to say, all is lost. The two challengers to the incumbent Democrats still under election threat who I consider to be stronger won last night. As we found in both November 2010 and April, a “max effort” from the Left can be beaten; however it takes a “max effort” on our part. We also know, thanks to the Supreme Court election, even a belated “max effort” can carry the day. In this regard, I am (almost) thankful John Nygren screwed up on his nomination papers – we know there is an enthusiasm gap and there is just under three weeks to counter it.

Revisions/extensions (9:34 am 7/21/2011) – Craig Gilbert took a different tack on turnout, looking at total turnout versus “opposition” turnout. While he noted that none of these races were expected to be competitive, he also noted the one serious precedent, the recall of George Petak down in Racine County after he flipped on the Miller Park tax vote, saw a turnout of estimated 37% of voting-age-population.

Assuming the Democrats actually had a “max effort/near-max turnout” in the 30th, Hansen would have been in trouble had turnout been 34% instead of 25%, may well have lost had turnout been the 37% it was in Racine in 1996, and would have lost had turnout been the 42% it was in November.

July 18, 2011

Is blogging dying?

by @ 19:37. Filed under The Blog.

I’ll ingore the fact that up until today, I hadn’t posted in over a week, and jump right into the mini-firestorm that John Hawkins kicked off by declaring the death of the right-o-sphere. Read that, and the return fires from Jimmie Bise (and his unintentional prequel, which should have had my name on the subject instead of his), William Jacobson (who shouldn’t have to worry about his place in the pecking order), Ann Althouse, John Lilyea, the Lonely Conservative, Dan Riehl, and Gregory Flap Cole, and then follow along the winding, rambling road.

John Hawkins, who is one of the rare professional independent bloggers who blogs for a living, interprets the stagflation of blog traffic as the slow death of the right side of the blogosphere. Honestly, what we’re seeing is quite similar to the consolidation the left side has seen. Indeed, William Jacobson noted that in his piece.

How much of that is consolidation at the top, how much is just more voices out there, and how much of that is social media sucking the life out of everybody is up for grabs. Way back in the day, Charlie Sykes established the Rule of Five, saying that one couldn’t really follow more than 5 blogs very closely. While he was way off on the 5 number, especially with the advent of RSS feeds, there is a very-real limit to how many blogs one can follow. Trust me on this one; I can’t keep up with all 400+ feeds I try to.

Jimmie Bise bemoans the lack of linkage, and Dan Riehl extends that to the Beltway mentality. Yes, there is definitely a part of that (side note; I really should bring back The Morning Scramble). The problem for a new blogger is all the major national players have pretty much solidified their list of sources, even though there is a dearth of good state- and local-level bloggers (a couple I recommend are Badger Blogger and Freedom Eden here in Wisconsin, Blue Collar Muse in Tennessee, and Thurber’s Thoughts out of Ohio). You just have to keep on sending good stuff up the food chain, and at times that includes what Jimmie calls “light stalking” (personal tip; don’t stalk the opposite sex).

The biggest bombshell was the quote of “(G)et big or go home,” in response to the question of what to do about stagnation. If you’re going to try to make money at this, small ball isn’t going to cut it, and unless you’re truly gifted, it’s probably too late to do it independently. Indeed, John notes that the consolidation has already happened at the top.

Flap, Ann Althouse, the Lonely Conservative and Dan Riehl all vehemently disagree. Flap sees social media as an extension of the blogosphere, and noted that the Tea Party Movement has its roots in it. Indeed, he sees social media much like the blogosphere back in the beginning.

As far as social media goes, it’s impossible to do more than a character-limited conversation on Twitter, even though one can punch way above one’s weight class every so often. As for Facebook/Google+, while it is theoretically possible to duplicate long-form posts that people will link to (see Sarah Palin), it’s very kludgy.

Ann notes that all sorts of people manage to make the time to do what is essentially full-time work for free. I’ll counter that if one isn’t counting on the hits, it doesn’t need to be full-time work. Hell, that explains the gaps in the posting schedule. Of course, over the years, I somehow managed to get a semi-loyal base of readers, and despite me being even more introverted and self-depreciating than Jimmie, a few of them happen to be movers and shakers.

So, while blogging is changing, it certainly isn’t dying.

Belatedly

by @ 18:50. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Sorry, I missed it Steve….I was out of the country…Really!

Living with 56 mpg

by @ 12:33. Filed under Envirowhackos, Transportation.

After I read Jazz Shaw’s series of posts on the Obama administration’s plan to raise the CAFE average to 56 mpg by 2025 (part 1, part 2), I was reminded of a story Car and Driver did back in the day on life at 40 mpg. Let’s take a trip into the future with the vehicles from today that at least come close to 56 mpg.

Before I get to the meat of the matter, however, there’s a couple of explanatory notes that need to be made. First, there is a significant diference between CAFE mileage and the mileage one sees on the sticker of the car. Last year, Popular Mechanics estimated that 35 CAFE mpg, a bit higher than the 34.1 CAFE mpg that is mandated for 2016, translated to between 26 and 27 mpg on the EPA combined sticker. That would suggest that 56 CAFE mpg would translate to about 42-43 mpg on the EPA combined sticker. That’s a good thing because nothing on the lot today gets 56 combined EPA mpg.

Between 2011 and early 2012 models, the Department of Energy says there are exactly three gasoline/diesel models, plus 3 electric-only models that will be ignored as Obama famously said “…electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket.” and (possibly, depending on the mix of electric- and gas-powered driving) one plug-in hybrid model, that meet the 42 combined EPA mpg standard. Even after knocking down the standard to 40 combined EPA mpg, we have added one more model (plus the 2011 version of a 2012 model that is rated at above 42 combined EPA mpg). Therefore, I’ll “cheat” some more and consider cars that are rated at a minimum of 35 combined EPA mpg (plus the 2011 Volkswagen and Audi diesels that get a 34 combined EPA mph rating based on the fact that the one 2012 VW diesel model in the database, which is larger than any model in the 2011 VW non-SUV TDI lineup, barely cleared the 35 combined EPA mpg mark).

There are three things that you won’t find in this lineup – SUVs, pick-up trucks, and minivans. The highest-mileage SUV is the Ford Escape Hybrid (and its rebadged siblings), which gets 32 combined EPA mpg in front-wheel-drive and 29 combined EPA mpg in all-wheel-drive models. The highest-mileage minivans are the 6-passenger “micro-van” Mazda 5 (24 combined EPA mpg with no cargo capacity if more than 4 passengers are in the vehicle), the 5-passenger cargo-minivan-based Ford Transit Connect Wagon (23 combined EPA mpg) and the “traditional” 7-passenger minivan Honda Odyssey (22 combined EPA mpg with the optional 6-speed automatic transmission). The highest-mileage pickups are the compact 2WD Ford Ranger (24 combined EPA mpg with the manual and 4-cylinder), the lighter-duty-than-its-full-size-suggests Chevrolet Silverado/GMC Sierra 1500 Hybrid (21 combined EPA mpg in both 2WD and 4WD configurations), and the compact/mid-sized 4WD Chevrolet Colorado/GMC Canyon (20 combined EPA mpg in either manual or automatic 4-cylinder versions).

None of the 16 models (plus siblings) that meet the mileage mark appear to be rated for towing, so the biggest water craft that they can transport is a canoe tied to the top (which really kills the aerodynamics and thus mileage). None of them can carry more than 5 people, so large families are out of luck. The highest-capacity version offers but 67 cubic feet of cargo capacity, so if you want to move that couch from one place to another, call up U-Haul.

I don’t have the budget that the car magazines do, so I’m going off their driving impressions. Now, let’s see what’s left to ply the roads in the ObamiNation:

Jr’s first car – Smartfortwo pure coupe (36 combined EPA mpg)

I’ll ignore the fact that this cheap little two-seater requires premium fuel to get its 36 combined EPA mpg. It is, by at least $6,000, the cheapest car of the contenders. Of course, the fact that it is literally half a car might have something to do with that.

Parents will like the fact that there isn’t a back seat and that Jr. can’t get the 70-horsepower car going fast enough to get into serious trouble. The problem is that it is entirely unsuitable for domesticated life with just the two seats and the tiny trunk.

The family sedan – Toyota Prius (50 combined EPA mpg)

Like the gang at the original version of “Top Gear”, I hate this car with a passion. Testers who care about performance have, until the latest version with the handling option, uniformly ripped the sterile driving environment. Other contenders, like the Ford Fusion hybrid and the Hyundai Sonata hybrid, offer more passenger room, especially in the back seat. However, the Fusion and the Sonata give up a lot of trunk space to accomodate the battery pack, while the Prius’ purpose-built hatchback trunk has 21.5 cubic feet of space. That allows for easier re-creations of “National Lampoon’s Vacation”.

The commuter car – Honda Civic hybrid (2012 version, 44 combined EPA mpg)

The first rule of commuting is to have a balance between city and highway mileage. One can’t get more balanced than the 44 EPA mpg city and 44 EPA mpg highway the 2012 model is rated. The second rule is that it be big enough to actually handle a carpool, which rules out the Smart. The third is that it be bland, and recent Civics are, outside the Si, bland. It’s also not the family hauler, so you won’t have to get the “My other car is also a Prius” bumper sticker (assuming, of course, you can afford 2 cars in the ObamiNation).

For just the briefest of moments, I had considered the Chevrolet Volt. However, once the electricity runs out, the EPA estimates that it would get a mere 35 mpg in the city and 40 mpg on the highway. Besides, there’s this little matter of necessarily-skyrocketing electric rates.

The “Mid-Life Crisis” car – Volkswagen Golf TDI (34 combined EPA mpg)

This is an exceedingly-hard category to fill as neither of the two contenders that actually get 35 combined EPA mpg are worthy of being called sports cars. The Smartfortwo cabriolet has the same wimpy drivetrain as the coupe. The CVT-equipped Honda CR-Z couldn’t break 9 seconds in the 0-60 mph test, and only Motor Trend found a way to get the manual version (which gets only 34 combined EPA mpg) to do that. Worse, while the manual version felt somewhat like a car that was comfortable being tossed about, the CVT didn’t exactly like it. Fortunately, the just-shy-of-35 combined EPA mpg (34) Golf TDI picked up the slack. Both Car and Driver and Motor Trend noted the TDI acted a lot like the sporty GTI in the twisties, and nothing that qualifies for the ObamiNation roads gets to 60 mph faster.

For those of you about to complain about whether the VW TDIs belong in this group, I can only offer an ancedotal bit of evidence that suggests the EPA is a bit conservative in their estimation. My father owns a 2009 Jetta TDI, and in the 6 months he doesn’t have to use the winter blends of diesel, he’s able to average better than 35 mpg in mostly short-distance suburban driving and bump it up to over 40 mpg on the highway. Of course, once the temperature drops and the service stations have to throw additives into the fuel to keep it from gelling, the mileage drops like a rock.

The light-duty cargo hauler – Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI (manual only, 34 EPA combined mpg)

Again, I had to cheat on the 35 combined EPA mpg by one to get something with hauling capacity, and I had to toss the automatic because its 33 combined EPA mpg is too low. If the upcoming Toyota Prius V wagon’s stats were verifiable instead of being estimates obtained by Edmund’s (44 EPA mpg city/40 EPA mpg highway/34 cubic feet behind the back seat/67 cubic feet behind the front seat), it would have won the category by default.

Instead, we’re left with another of Volkswagen’s oil-burners, at least for those who can handle a clutch. Its 32.8 cubic feet of cargo space behind the back seat easily beats the next-best Prius’ under-22 cubic feet behind the seat and comes close to the 39.6 cubic feet Edmund’s measured behind the Prius’ front seat. Fold the Jetta’s seats down and that expands to 66.9 cubic feet.

The personal luxury car – Lincoln MKZ Hybrid (39 combined EPA mpg)

How did Ford take a rebadged version of its small family hauler, hybridize it, and beat two Lexus hybrids? The trifecta of “mainstream” car magazines unanimously say that it feels more like the standard MKZ than the Lexus hybrids feel like “real” Lexuses. It doesn’t hurt that the base Fusion Hybrid is a very competent car (more on that in a bit).

The limousine/taxi – Volkswagen Passat TDI (35 combined EPA mpg)

It’s all about the rear seat, and nothing in the group comes close to the 39.1 inches of rear-seat legroom in the Passat. Add in a group-leading 57.0 inches of shoulder room and a not-exceeded 37.8 inches of headroom, and a sedan-leading 15.9 cubic feet of trunk space, and the few people who can afford to be driven around might for just a second forget the Crown Vic, the Town Car and the DTS that currently serve these roles.

The cop car – Ford Fusion Hybrid 39 combined EPA mpg)

This one is pretty much by default – only the Fusion (and its corporate siblings) and the Chevrolet Volt are from the Big Three, and the Governmen..er, General Motors entry is rather lacking in both size and performance. That isn’t to say it’s a bad default from the performance side – the Fusion is able to hit 60 mph in about 8.5 seconds, hang onto the skidpad to the tune of around 0.8 g, and, unlike Car and Driver’s choice back in the day of the Honda CRX HF for this role, transport prisoners. Of course, the 11.8-cubic-foot trunk is barely half the 21 cubic feet found in the Ford Police Interceptor (and also smaller than that in the Dodge Charger or Chevrolet Impala), so some of the gear the average officer hauls around “just in case” won’t be there.

July 7, 2011

The GM-ification of the federal government, or “Obama, SEIU toss grandma over the cliff”

by @ 16:46. Filed under Politics - National, Social Security crater.

It is perhaps fitting that Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) compared the debt crisis to a bankruptcy, though not in the way he intended. Before I give you what Obama is prepared to do, I’ll give you the quote from Sen. Johnson (courtesy Tina Korbe over at Hot Air):

“I’ve been on the unsecured creditor side of a customer going bankrupt,” he said. “If you come to me as an unsecured creditor in a bankruptcy situation where the customer is going through a reorganization and you say, ‘Secured creditors are getting dollar for dollar — that’s interest on the debt, that’s Social Security. The rest of you guys, until we get this figured out, will basically get 60 cents on the dollar. Once we go through the reorganization, once we get this figured out, you’ll probably get 98 cents on the dollar.’ I’d be going, ‘That’s a sweet deal.’ I’d do that in an instant.”

The problem is, that’s just not how bankruptcies happen in the ObamiNation. I’ll let Doug Ross explain why Obama is throwing seniors under the bus (emphasis in the original):

Consider what Obama has already committed to — or is proposing to — cut:

  • The Obamacare takeover of the health care industry slashed $500 billlion from Medicare to help pay for the new entitlement.
  • The states will be forced to find about $400 billion in Medicaid funding in 2011, this time without the “shovel-ready Stimulus” package which picked up about $100 billion of the tab.

And now the President proposes additional cuts for seniors, this time in the form of reductions in Social Security.

Notice who doesn’t have to sacrifice: the public sector unions, whose support is crucial to Obama’s 2012 relection campaign.

Given the treatment of the creditors in the government seizures of GM and Chrysler in favor of the profiting UAW (at last check, the UAW will end up getting over $1.50 on every dollar GM owed it), we should have seen this coming.

That is not to say, however, that Social Security is a sacred cow. After all, assuming the Trustees’ intermediate-case scenario isn’t too rosy, in order to get the “Trust Funds” to their exhaustion dates of 2018 for the Disability Insurance fund and 2038 for the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance fund, the Treasury Department will need to come up with roughly $7 trillion in cash it doesn’t have.

Ask Egg – Twitter edition

by @ 8:01. Filed under Ask Egg.

If President Obama can crank out the Twitter version of “Ask Me”, I can lampoon it. Let’s roll in 140 characters or less, with the note that other than my account, these aren’t real Twitter accounts (though it should be easy to tell who I’m lampooning):

TehWon2012: How can I rescue the economy? #AskEgg
steveegg: @TehWon2012 Resign? Make the Bush-era tax rates permanent. Start drilling. Kill the EPA. Of course, you won’t listen. #AskEgg

Fleebag14: When we can’t honestly change our name to @Fleebag17 after spending millions, what next? #AskEgg
steveegg: @Fleebag14 3 words – Suck. It. Up. (or 2 for the DX fans among you) #AskEgg

BigBenFed: I’ve seen QE1 and QE2 slip beneath the waves. Should I launch QE3? #AskEgg
steveegg: @BigBenFed: Don’t be insane. The only things it did were sink the dollar and the economy. #AskEgg

MarkyDMN: I’ve inflicted as much pain as I could, but I still can’t get the eeeevil Pubbies to keep people from being as rich as me. What now? #AskEgg
steveegg: @MarkyDMN If U listened 2 Target CFO, you would have figured out MN is at the far end of the Laffer Curve. See reply to @Fleebag14. #AskEgg

NREFan: Are you going to post more? #AskEgg
steveegg: @NREFan Depends on how I feel.

Thus ends this episode of Ask Egg.

July 4, 2011

Yes but No

by @ 19:40. Filed under Global "Warming".

It’s been a lot of fun watching the contortions the folks invested in global warming have been going through the past couple of years.  Begin with the stolen emails that showed severe credibility questions with foundational AGW research, add the recent lack of high count hurricane seasons and double it with increasing studies that tie Earth’s temperature changes to solar activity and you get AGW scientists chasing theories looking like the Keystone Kops chasing a petty thief. Yet, for all the pretzel logic moves employed in an attempt to keep AGW alive, I can’t remember any as wacky as this from Reuters:

Asia pollution blamed for halt in warming: study

According to this study, sulphur from coal burning plants in Asia have offset the increase we nasty humans have created in carbon dioxide. The result is that global temperatures are no longer rising!

Oh, lucky us! Now we don’t have to cut back on our carbon dioxide emissions! Wait, not so fast! The article goes on to say that as the nasty coal plants are cleaned up and sulphur is reduced, we’ll go right back to sending our temperatures towards those of Mercury. Damn, we can’t win!

Let me see if I have this correct:

  1. If we pollute the world with carbon dioxide, we’ll all burn up…
  2. If we pollute the world with sulphur, the world is fine…
  3. But we can’t pollute the world with sulphur because it’s bad?  Can it be worse than being burnt to a crisp by our own sun?

I thought pollution was bad but now pollution is good, right?  Well yes, but no!

I’m so confused!

Update 7/5 –If the above irony isn’t enough, glance through this article and you can see why the logic has gotten so contorted.  Some people will tell you anything you want to hear if their…livlihood depends on it.

June 30, 2011

No Shit Sherlock!

by @ 19:56. Filed under Economy, Economy Held Hostage, Politics - National.

In remarks today to CNBC, Federal Reserve Governor, Alan Greenspan said that the quantitative easing (stimulus) undertaken by the current Fed Chairman hasn’t done squat!

“There is no evidence that huge inflow of money into the system basically worked,” Greenspan said in a live interview.

This current criticism is not to be confused with Greenspan’s admission last September, that the Porkulus bill had no where near (if at all) the effect that was promised (remember that unemployment was never going over 8% if we did porkulus and now can’t seem to get under 9%!)  No, today’s revelation is focused on Brenanke’s attempt to revive the economy by printing billions and billions (hello Rod Serling) of additional greenbacks and shoving them into the economy.

Since late 2008, the Fed has pushed nearly $2B of additional paper money into the economy.This during a time when the economy was somewhere between marking time and shrinking.  the Fed’s basic theory was that by putting those dollars into the economy, various asset prices would increase and this would cause businesses and consumers to feel more “wealthy” which would let them feel like they could spend more, thus moving economic growth along.

Brenanke was right about increasing asset prices.  Since QE1 and 2, the stock markets have all increased and commodity prices have all increased, some of them dramatically.  However, none of this has seemed to convince businesses or consumers that it’s now OK to spend like the federal government.  Why?  What did Brenanke miss?

I told you here that Obama’s election chances would hinge on the 3Gs; Gas, Groceries and GDP.  Equally, Brenanke’s ability to get people to believe they had more wealth and therefore to spend it, also was driven by the 3Gs.  Through the entire time of QE1 and QE2, gas and groceries (made up from commodities that Brenanke wanted to increase the price of) increased in price.  At the same time, net home values (the place where much of the “wealth” from about 2004 to 2008 came from) continued to decline.  Add to all of this the fact that unemployment has increased or stayed relatively flat during the money influx and what do you know…..consumers have acted rationally and decided to save and pay down debt rather than buy new stuff with the bucks that Uncle Ben has been air dropping into the economy.

The real question is what will happen to the economy now that the stimulus has ceased?  One theory would suggest that if the economy doesn’t pick up, commodities have been artificially run up and have the potential to be the next asset bubble to pop.  If the economy does pick up, the additional dollars available could take an inflation rate that has been recently increasing to an accelerated level and bring us back to the days of Jimmy Carter.

Obama and his administration acolytes continue to operate with the belief that if they say it is so, it is.  While “repeatedly says” that he focused on jobs and the economy and that things are improving, anyone outside of the Washington belt way can easily see that none of that is true.  When Alan Greenspan says that the stimulus had no effect, as if it is some kind of an oracle insight, the rest of America says “No shit Sherlock!”

Open Thread Thursday – Let’s speed it up

by @ 9:25. Filed under Open Thread Thursday.

Just because somebody did this and it’s cool as the other side of the pillow, I’ll give you “Four Horsemen” at “The Mechanix” speed as my way of welcoming back Open Thread Thursday…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKPWLlbbQvY[/youtube]

I’ve got a couple of long-form posts that require some further gestation, so pipe up.

Housekeeping note – In case you missed it, I got a key to The Right Scoop, mostly because he wanted a piece on the latest initial unemployment claims.

Initial jobless claims stuck above 425K, new “U” word introduced by CNBC

by @ 9:02. Filed under Economy Held Hostage.

Initial jobless claims on a seasonally-adjusted basis declined by 1,000 last week from 429,000 to 428,000. While Reuters rewrote their story to avoid the use of its favorite “u” word (or specifically, its cousin “less than expected”) and thus caused me to blow up the original post, CNBC retained their dip into the dictionary to create its own dire headline with a new “u” word after switching from an Associated Press report to the Reuters report currently linked.

The use of “unexpectedly” and its cousins by the media, and mostly Reuters, has become so prevalent that Ed Morrissey has made it a more-or-less regular feature at Hot Air. CNBC’s use of “ugly”, however, is new.

Since that was originally attached to the AP’s report that looked at the longer-term trend, I’ll give the lowlights from that report:

– After a brief trip to 375,000 in February, which was in the middle of a 7-of-9 week trend of claims below 400,000, initial jobless claims spiked to 478,000 in April and in the AP’s words, “…have shown only modest improvement since that time,” as they have been above 400,000 the last 12 weeks.

– The four-week rolling average has been in the neighborhood of 426,000 initial claims per week for the last month.

– While the total number of people on the 26-week unemployment insurance “fell” to 3.7 million in the middle of June, the total number of people on unemployment, including those on extended benefits, remains at nearly 7.5 million.

There is a reason why I put “fell” in the last bullet point in scare quotes – that measure has been significantly gamed in the last week. Tom Blumer at BizzyBlog first noticed the constant upward revision of the prior week’s initial jobless claims. While this marks the first week in 15 that upward revision has not happened (indeed, it was not revised at all), there was a significant upward revision in the total number of people on 26-week unemployment insurance. Last week, the “advance” numbers of people on unemployment insurance for the week ending 6/11 was 3,697,000. This week, the final number settled at 3,714,000. That makes the claim that the 6/19 advance number of 3,702,000 represents a decrease rather suspect.

A copy of this is at The Right Scoop

June 29, 2011

Australian military to hold yard sale

by @ 11:58. Filed under Military.

(H/T – Darren Buckley, an old ‘Pooner friend from Down Under)

I almost termed this a “fire sale” as over the next 10 years the Australian Defence Force will be shedding 10% of Australia’s non-financial assets, but the Australian Associated Press notes that the Australian Defence Force is in the middle of a major overhaul of its military. Indeed, Defence Materiel Minister Jason Clare said that, over the next 15 years, 85% of the armed forces’ armaments will be replaced or upgraded.

Known to be on the block are the four Adelaide-class guided-missile frigates, which are “slightly”-modified Perry-class frigates, as well as a bunch of combat aircraft, armored vehicles, other vehicles, and assorted armaments. I know the FFGs will fit in the St. Lawrence Seaway as Perry-class FFGs (really, FFs now that they don’t have the Mk-13 launcher), so I can keep it on Lake Michigan. If only I had a tip jar, I couldd have the most kick-ass fishing boat in Wisconsin.

Seriously, Claire pointed out that, since 1997, Great Britain and Australia disposed of roughly the same amount and type of military equipment. While Great Britain netted about AUS$1 billion by being aggressive on selling rather than scrapping, Australia spent about AUS$20 million.

Perhaps I should wait until the coming Great American Military Fire Sale to pay not for the modernization of our military but for the Communization of the country. Of course, given much of the debt is held by Red China, they’ll probably demand and receive first dibs on all the good stuff.

June 28, 2011

Filling in the blanks on Taiwan Politics – WI Supreme Court Style

by @ 13:36. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

It may be short on actual names attached to the attributed version, but Christian Schneider put up the most-complete timeline yet of a version of the events surrounding the incident between Justices David Prosser and Ann Walsh Bradley, extending from before the incident itself to the leak of the news to Soros-funded “media”, over at National Review. Let’s see if I can do the Cliff Notes’ version:

– The week prior to the incident, three of the justices were prepared to issue an order on the case of Act 10. Prosser wanted to delay some to avoid the appearance of rushing as oral arguments occured on 6/6, and apparently reached a deal with Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson that the order would be issued on 6/14.

– On 6/13, no notice that an order would be forthcoming had been made, so at 5:30 pm, Prosser and the other conservative Justices went looking for Abrahamson to get an explanation. They found her in Bradley’s office.

– Prosser remained outside the office and got into a heated discussion with Abrahamson over the issue of timing of the release of the order.

– Bradley rushed out to confront Prosser, with one source saying she was shaking a fist in his face and another saying they were “nose to nose”.

– Prosser pushed Bradley about the shoulders to get her out of his face, and in the course of that, contacted her neck. At the same time, another Justice was attempting to pull Bradley back from Prosser.

– On 6/15, 2 days after he had been notified of the incident by Bradley, Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs talked to all 7 Justices, including the not-present Justice Patrick Crooks, about violence in the workplace. No further action appears to have been made by the Capitol Police, which has jurisdiction in the Capitol building and thus the Supreme Court offices, and to date, nobody has pressed criminal charges.

I do recommend, as always, reading the entire piece. There are a bunch of details I left out of the above summary.

Revisions/extensions (10:10 pm 6/28/2011) – Two people who have been following the ins and outs of the Supreme Court longer than I have weighed in on just how long the Court has been dysfunctional, and who the constant in the dysfunctionality is.

John Mercure of WTMJ-AM interviewed former Supreme Court Justice William Callow (he served between 1977 and 1992 and still is an active reserve judge) on his show this afternoon, and Callow fingered Abrahamson as the chief troublemaker.

Meanwhile, Rick Esenberg, in a comment on his Sunday morning take, remembered that the majority of the court had endorsed Abrahamson’s opponent…in 1999.

I note two things – the second-longest serving Justice (Bradley) joined the Court in 1995, and three current Justices were not on the Court in 1999.

Also, welcome Memeorandum readers.

Tuesday Hot Read – Kevin Binversie’s “‘Supreme’ idiocy all around”

by @ 6:36. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

Over at his new gig at the Wisconsin Reporter, Kevin Binversie put up the most-exhaustive take yet on the Supreme Rumble. I’ll give you the last three paragraphs to whet your whistle:

There are a lot of factors here, all of which are along the lines of stupid and petty. So stupid and petty, you’d think we were dealing with toddlers and not some of the most respected legal minds in the state of Wisconsin.

Yes, Prosser has a temper and a short fuse. This is a well-known and documented fact since his Assembly days. However, what’s lost in a lot of the coverage is the apparent sycophantic defense Walsh Bradley has for Chief Justice Abrahamson if the “she charged him version” of the events is true.

The battle of factions within the Wisconsin Supreme Court is well-known in both the state’s legal and political circles; but now it’s to a point that public back-stabbing and reports of physical altercations only help feed growing concern the court is teetering into professional dysfunction. Somewhere, someone has to be the adult in the room; but from the look of things, we’re a long way from that with the justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The battle of the factions really started to boil over when Justice Michael Gabelman defeated appointed Justice Louis Butler in 2008. Since then, Abrahamson, Bradley and Patrick Crooks have done everything they could to remove Gabelman from the Court, going so far as to ignore the recommendation of the Wisconsin Judicial Commission that an allegation of false political advertising against Gabelman in that campaign did not warrant action by the Court, which prompted the “intemperate” remark from Prosser behind closed doors and leaked from a Bradley e-mail.

June 27, 2011

Taiwan politics – WI Supreme Court style

by @ 13:37. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

In case you’ve been in a cave all weekend, there was a physical altercation between Justices David Prosser and Ann Walsh Bradley a week and a half ago as all but one of the Supreme Court justices were in Bradley’s chambers discussing the timing of the release of the order affecting Act 10, the budget repair/collective bargaining law. What is known is Prosser made some remarks directed at Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson after she suggested that the release would be delayed until after the end of June (this despite a majority ready to issue an order), Bradley demanded Prosser leave her chambers, and contact about Bradley’s neck ensued. The under-reported version of the events from anonymous sources (as far as I can tell, the only media reports that include that version come from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and that version is “mysteriously” missing from the AP coverage widely reported nationwide) claim Bradley charged Prosser with fists raised and that the contact was defensive on Prosser’s part, while Bradley is belatedly publicly claiming Prosser put her in a “chokehold”, matching the first “anonymous” claims.

I’ll send you over to Althouse for a steady stream of updates, including the less-than-fully-acknowledged wholesale ReWrite™ of the original Soros-funded Wisconsin Watch piece after the MJS turned up the version that included a charging Bradley. I do have a heap of questions on this:

– Why was this discussion happening in Bradley’s chambers? Bradley is neither the Chief Justice (Abrahamson, who was present, is) nor an author of any part of the set of orders/concurrences/dissents. I don’t claim to know standard operating procedure at the Wisconsin Supreme Court, but it would be logical that, especially when the Chief Justice is involved in discussions, the discussions would happen in the Chief Justice’s chambers.

– Why did Bradley choose to intervene in a verbal dispute between Prosser and Abrahamson? The last time I checked, Abrahamson was able to handle herself in the verbal arena. If Bradley felt the need to intervene, both Prosser and Abrahamson should have been asked to depart the room.

– If it was a “chokehold”, why has the only action by the Capitol Police been, as of this morning, been to have the chief, Charles Tubbs, meet with all 7 justices (including the not-present Patrick Crooks)? I know we’re talking about the Capitol Police and Chief Wiggu…er, Tubbs here, but how long does it take to interview 6 Justices and perhaps an equal number of staff (note; I have not seen anything that states that anybody other than the Justices were present)?

WITI-TV has reported that the Capitol Police anticipates releasing a statement today, though that has not come as of yet. The Journal Sentinel is quoting anonymous sources that the Capitol Police will be handing over the investigation to the Dane County Sheriff’s office.

– The $64 million question from Darleen Glick – (D)o you think that a woman like Bradley, who seriously considered calling the cops because Prosser used a profanity about another justice would not call the cops if she was the victim of an unprovoked, physical assault in front of witnesses? More properly, that question would be one of pressing charges as at some point the Capitol Police was notified of the incident.

On the other hand, Milwaukee County Board Chairman Lee Holloway has physically assaulted fellow board members on multiple occassions, and no police report was filed.

Revisions/extensions (1:48 pm 6/27/2011) – Almost immediately after I posted, Tubbs turned over the investigation to the Dane County Sheriff’s office (same link).

June 23, 2011

Thursday Hot Read – Patrick Ishmael’s “Fatal Attraction: Politicians and ‘Eco-Devo’”

by @ 19:18. Filed under Economy, Politics.

Over at The Weekly Standard, Patrick Ishmael highlights a boondoggle of a pork-barrel “green” project that purports to turn St. Louis’ Lambert International Airport into an “Aerotropolis”. The plan is to provide subsidies for $300 million worth of warehouses and another $60 million to international freight companies. There’s one bit of a problem, however:

Never mind that there are already more than 18 million square feet of unused warehouse space around the airport. And never mind that it was only a dozen years ago that the city of Saint Louis splurged in building a third runway — at a cost of more than a billion dollars — that is virtually unused today. That was another eco-devo project that failed to deliver promised jobs and economic activity. It also led to the condemnation and destruction of more than 2,000 homes under eminent domain.

Michael Webber, a consultant with long experience in the international shipping industry, debunks almost all of the claims made for the Aerotropolis, saying that Saint Louis “has adequate on-airport capacity (existing facilities or unimproved land) to host adequate air cargo facilities to support the unlikely maximum of 8 projected weekly freighters,” the number expected to be facilitated by the legislation.

The big problem is air freight is prohibitively expensive, which is why typically only very-time-sensitive items are shipped by air. The idea floated by one of the Missouri advocates that cattle could be flown to China is patently absurd.

Apparently Milwaukee is another place where the Aerotroplis concept is forming. There isn’t quite as much empty warehouse space around Mitchell Field as there is around Lambert, but there’s also two different rail lines bounding the airport, which makes for a more-balanced shipping component.

June 21, 2011

Recall Mania dates (all-but-)locked

by @ 19:09. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

With the passage of the 5 pm deadline today to file to run in the recalls of Democrat Senators Dave Hansen, Jim Holperin and Bob Wirch, the timeline for elections has been set, assuming none of the 9 challenges by the incumbents are successful in voiding the recall election. Barring that, here’s the timeline for Recall Mania, with the note that the three “placeholder” candidates advanced by the Democrat Party of Wisconsin in districts currently held by Republicans to ensure primaries did not file economic interest statements and thus won’t be on the ballot):

July 12 – Recall Democrat “primaries” (DPW-endorsed candidate listed first, RPW protest caniddate second) in the 2nd Senate District (Nancy Nusbaum vs. Otto Junkerman), 8th Senate District (Sandy Pasch vs Gladys Huber), 10th Senate District of Shelia Harsdorf (Shelly Moore vs Issax Weix), 14th Senate District (Fred Clark vs Rol Church), 18th Senate District (Jessica King vs John Buckstaff) and 32nd Senate District (Jennifer Shilling vs James Smith).

July 19 – Recall Republican primaries (pending filing of economic interest statements by all involved) in the 12th Senate District (Kim Simac vs Robert Lussow), 22nd Senate District (Fred Ekornaas vs Jonathan Steitz) and 30th Senate District (John Nygren vs David VanderLeest). The potential Democrat primary in the 30th between incumbent Dave Hansen and Josh O’Harrow evaporated when O’Harrow failed to file signatures by today Also, if one or more of these candidates fail to file statements of economic interest by Friday, the July 19th date will become a general election against the incumbent(s) in the affected districts, Democrats Jim Holperin in the 12th, Robert Wirch in the 22nd and Dave Hansen in the 30th, all with no third-party/independent candidates on the ballot.

August 9 – Recall general elections in the Senate districts currently held by Republicans – Robert Cowles in the 2nd, Alberta Darling in the 8th, Shelia Harsdorf in the 10th, Luther Olsen in the 14th, Randy Hopper in the 18th and Dan Kapanke in the 32nd. There are no third-party/independent candidates on the ballot.

August 16 – Recall general elections in the Senate districts currently held by the Democrats (assuming there were primaries held on July 19th).

WisPolitics also reports that the Government Accountabillty Board will file a motion with Dane County Judge Richard Niess, already set to hear challenges from Hopper and Kapanke, and also the judge that allowed the attempted consolidation of all the elections, to consolidate all the challenges to the recall election orders into a single case. While the RPW attorney welcomed the move, the DPW attorney was skeptical of including the challenge of the three Democrats in the consolidation. I wonder how much of that skepticism was because it would likely take that case out of Maryann Sumi’s courtroom.

Revisions/extensions (7:51 pm 6/21/2011) – To answer PaulM’s question in another post, unless an incumbent is certified as having been defeated, he or she continues to serve as a state senator until the expiration of the term at the beginning of January, 2013. Of course, the Senate, once it ends its current session at the end of this month, isn’t in session again until September.

“We need to limit public union collective bargaining privileges,” says…IL Gov. Pat Quinn?

by @ 13:48. Filed under Politics.

(H/T – WI State Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills))

The Chicago Tribune reports Democrat Illinois governor Pat Quinn is urging the Illinois state Senate to follow the House in stripping collective bargaining privileges for certain “management” positions in state government, including attorneys, legislative liasons and deputy chiefs of staff for state agencies to save money and create a (false) sense of management separate from the unionista process.

Predictably, the unionistas are squealing, even though if the bill passed, 92 percent of state employees would still remain unionized. Apparently, they like the idea of potentially having only 760 of Illinois’ 45,000 public employees be non-union.

I’m torn betwee the politicians on the far side of the toll booths having a moment of clarity and them continuing to be wholly-owned subsidiaries of Duh Union. The Tribune noted the Senate wasn’t likely to follow the House’s lead, so the exodus out of the Land of Hype and Change will continue.

June 20, 2011

Texan II vs Tucano – the rematch

by @ 17:39. Filed under Military.

The United States Air Force is expected to announce soon the winning entry in its Light Atttack/Armed Reconnaissance program, with the winner getting to build 100 aircraft. The two contenders are the Hawker Beechcraft/Lockheed Martin AT-6 (based on the T-6 Texan II trainer) and the Embraer/Sierra Nevada A-29/EMB-314 Super Tucano.

This is not the first time the Texan II and the Super Tucano have faced off in a USAF competition. Back in the 1990s, the T-6 beat out the EMB-312H Super Tucano, a variant of the standard EMB-312 Tucano, to become the primary trainer for both the USAF and the United States Navy.

Embraer went on to develop the EMB-314 Super Tucano based on the -312H design, and successfully marketed it to several other South American countries. Indeed, the Super Tucano was put to use successfully by Columbia in raids on FARC bases.

Also, the Navy tried out a leased copy of the Super Tucano for the SEALs in 2009, and by all accounts, liked it so much that they wanted additional planes. That, however, fell through due to lack of funding.

Beechcraft, for its part, wasn’t standing still. The T-6 was designed from the outset, at the insistence of the Hellenic Air Force, to fulfill the light attack role. The current AT-6 prototypes expand on this potential, featuring uprated engines, additional hard points to mount weapons, and armor protection mandated by the LAAR program.

The first question to answer is whether what is essentially a manned version of the MQ-9 Reaper is necessary. Both the AT-6 and the Super Tucano have similar weapons performance to the Reaper, though the manned planes are a bit faster and have far less endurance. While each flight of either plane would involve aircrew going into, potentially, harm’s way, there won’t be a datalink between the platform and those controlling said platform that can be broken into and compromised. In the era of hyper-sensitivity over collateral damage, having an unjammable link between the human activating the weapons release and the weapon being fired is worth the risk.

I’m not privy to any flight testing that has been done, so I can’t answer whether the modifications made to the T-6 have radically changed the flight characteristics of the AT-6, or how hard the integration of USAF-specific avionics has been for either type. Assuming neither was a significant issue, the fact that just about every pilot that came up in the last 10 years flew the Texan II means familiarity with the basic flight envelope would tend to tip the scales in its favor, especially when the mission turns into a two-way shooting match.

Another item that would seem to tip the scales in the favor of the AT-6 is the ejection system. The AT-6 seats are designed to safely handle a far wider range of crew, especially women, than the A-29’s seats. Of course, that may well be able to be rectified by Embraer with a minimum of fuss.

That leads me to the sourcing. Yes, neither leading company is a government-controlled entity, but Embraer is a foreign entity. There is a reason why the Pentagon has typically required foreign entities that win procurement contracts to use American sources for both assembly and major parts; we don’t feel like being held hostage to the whims of another country.

That is not just an idle threat, either historically or specifically to the use of this plane in a manner that Brazil does not appove. After Columbia used its Super Tucanos in a cross-border raid on FARC facilities in Ecuador, Brazil cut diplomatic relations with Columbia for a while. On the historic end, France blocked Israel from access to Dassault Mirage 5 jets it had already paid for back in 1967.

The Air Force needs to choose a plane that will get the job done. It does also, however, need to make sure that it can use the plane more than once.

June 17, 2011

Friday Hot Read – IBD’s “The Economy Dems Now Own”

by @ 11:01. Filed under Economy Held Hostage, Politics - National.

The gang over at Investor’s Business Daily really teed off on DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s admission that the economy was now the Democrats’. I’ll give you the first four (no pun intended) paragraphs to whet your appetite; as always, I highly encourage you to read the rest:

The head of the Democratic National Committee says the administration has turned the economy around. So let us give discredit where discredit is due.

Joe Biden should sue DNC chief and Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz for copyright infringement based on her statement at a Politico breakfast. We thought the vice president had a monopoly on statements completely detached from reality.

“We own the economy,” Schultz said. “We own the beginning of the turnaround, and we want to make sure that we continue that pace of recovery, not go back to the policies of the past under the Bush administration that put us in the ditch in the first place.”

That’s right, Debbie, you guys own the economy, though you might explain President Obama’s chuckle about those shovel-ready jobs not being as shovel-ready as he thought. Does your “pace of recovery” include an official rate of unemployment of 9.1% after a failed trillion-dollar stimulus was supposed to cap it at 8% and force it downward?

June 15, 2011

The obligatory “If the majority opinion were a movie clip” clip

by @ 7:13. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

If you’re looking for learned, legal-scholarly opinion on the majority opinion that restored Act 10 to law, I’ll send you over to William Jacobson at the soon-to-be-off-Blogger Legal Insurrection. Of course, there is some football-spiking involved.

I’ll provide the obligatory clip from “Billy Madison”, which sums up what the majority told Maryann Sumi yesterday quite well…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfYJsQAhl0[/youtube]

Is Act 10 effective right now?

by @ 2:20. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

Disclosure – I am not a lawyer. Further, I do not have access to the records of the Goodland case from 1943, so I cannot answer how the Supreme Court, and if memory serves, the appeals court before it, dealt with the timing issues related to the striking down of the circuit court’s attempt to block publication of an act. Therefore, there is a possibility this analysis could be in error.

In case you missed the news, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, as part of taking the case of Wisconsin Act 10 on original jurisdiction, vacated and voided ab initio all orders and judgements issued by Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi in the original case that had blocked implementation of the act as Sumi exceeded her authority set by both the state constitution and the Supreme Court by enjoining publication of the act.

Predictably, Democrat Secretary of State Doug La Follette thinks he can delay for at least a bit longer its enforcement because, based solely on the first of Sumi’s orders, he changed the designated publication date from March 25 to a date uncertain. Meanwhile, Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (R-Horicon), speaking on Mark Belling’s show on WISN-AM shortly after the ruling, and Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin) believe Act 10 is now law. For his part Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch says his office will begin implementing the act “when appropriate”. Let’s see if I can sort some of this out.

While the order from the Supreme Court does not directly address the date of publication, from which, in normal circumstances, the effectiveness of an act stems, it can be inferred from both the order and the statutes that the act is considered by the Court to have been published on March 25, and by Wis. Stat. §991.11, which states, “Every act and every portion of an act enacted by the legislature over the governor’s partial veto which does not expressly prescribe the time when it takes effect shall take effect on the day after its date of publication as designated under s. 35.095 (3) (b),” and by the order yesterday voiding all of Sumi’s blocking orders, it is currently in effect.

I’ll leave the distinction between the three possible effective dates (March 26, June 14 or June 15) to the professionals as that can and probably will have legal consequences for those local units of government who cut deals with public unions on and after March 26. I will, however, push on with the publication date.

Paragraph 10 of the order comes closest to addressing whether the act is already published, and indeed is the only paragraph of the order itself that mentions either the office of the Secretary of State or the person who holds it:

10 Article IV, Section 17 of the Wisconsin Constitution vests the legislature with the constitutional power to “provide by law” for publication. The legislature has set the requirements for publication. However, the Secretary of State has not yet fulfilled his statutory duty to publish a notice of publication of the Act in the official state newspaper, pursuant to Wis. Stat. § 14.38(10)(c). Due to the vacation of the circuit court’s orders, there remain no impediments to the Secretary of State fulfilling his obligations under § 14.38(10)(c).

Let’s review what that section, which covers the duties of the Secretary of State says:

Publish in the official state newspaper within 10 days after the date of publication of an act a notice certifying the number of each act, the number of the bill from which it originated, the date of publication and the relating clause. Each certificate shall also contain a notice of where the full text of each act can be obtained. Costs under this paragraph shall be charged to the appropriation under s. 20.765 (1) (d).

Do note the “after the date of publication” part of the time limit to publish the notice, and the requirement to include the “date of publication” in the notice, in § 14.38(10)(c). Also, do notice the specific language in the order saying that La Follette had “…not yet fulfilled his statutory duty to publish a notice of publication of the Act…”. The inclusion of that specific language, and not any language that refers to the publication of the act itself, strongly suggests that the majority believes that the act was already published by state law.

The Supreme Court, as stated above, voided ab initio all of Sumi’s orders, including her first temporary restraining order on March 18 enjoining La Follette (and only La Follette) from any further action in the process of publication and implementation of Act 10. To put it in English, that means that in the eyes of the Court, none of Sumi’s orders ever were valid.

La Follette, who on March 14 had designated March 25 as the publication date, subsequently sent notice to the Legislative Reference Bureau informing them that, pursuant to that TRO he rescinded the publication date and would not issue a new one until a later date.

Since the TRO no longer has, and indeed never did have, any legal standing, the question is whether La Follette had any statutory authority to change the publication date days after designating one. A quick review of the timeline is in order:

  • On March 11, Governor Scott Walker signed Act 10, thus enacting it, and deposited it in the Secretary of State’s office for publication.
  • On March 14, La Follette, pursuant to § 35.095(3)(b), designated to the Legislative Reference Bureau March 25, the last date allowed by statute, as the date of publication of the act.
  • On March 18, Sumi issued her first TRO enjoining La Follette from publishing the act. Also on that date, La Follette used that TRO as the justification in an attempt to change the March 25 date of publication to a date uncertain.
  • On March 25, the Legislative Reference Bureau, pursuant to § 35.095(3)(a), published the act on the last date allowed by statute with a note that, due to the TRO, La Follette was enjoined from publshing the act.

There is a further limitation to the Secretary of State’s ability to designate a date of publication beyond the 10 working day requirement in § 35.095(3)(b). § 14.38(10)(a) reads, “No later than the next working day following the deposit of an act in his or her office, provide written notice to the legislative reference bureau of the act number and date of enactment, and the designated date of publication of the act under s. 35.095.”

There is, as far as I can tell, no statutory language that gives the Secretary of State any authority to, after the working day following the deposit of an act in his office, change the designated date of publication, much less to a date beyond 10 working days after the date of enactment.

In this case, since La Follette designated March 25 as the date of publication on March 14, the working day after the act was deposited in his office, and the Supreme Court voided the judicial justification for a date-of-publication change after March 14, La Follette’s attempt to change the date of publication on March 18 is without any legal basis.

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

[No Runny Eggs is proudly powered by WordPress.]