Best veto message ever.

Big surprise: Cash for Clunkers was a clunker

Yet another stimulus program that simply enticed buyers to do now what they would have done anyway. Meanwhile, let's look forward to those end-of-year car sales that'll inevitably occur because Clunkers created a subsidized mid-year orgy of vehicle purchases. Nothing dries up a market like accelerating demand.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — October 28, 2009 — Edmunds.com, the premier resource for online automotive information, has determined that Cash for Clunkers cost taxpayers $24,000 per vehicle sold.

Nearly 690,000 vehicles were sold during the Cash for Clunkers program, officially known as CARS, but Edmunds.com analysts calculated that only 125,000 of the sales were incremental. The rest of the sales would have happened anyway, regardless of the existence of the program.

Prosser destroys Mike McCabe

And I, for one, will be eagerly awaiting the moment in the next few weeks when Wisconsin Eye gets this video up on its website. (update: Video here, McCabe at 59:00, Prosser at 1:15:00. Typical Wisconsin Eye - click on the link and then go make dinner while the video loads. h/t Illusory Tenant)

“It seems to me there probably is some concern about the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and a lot of it is tied directly to you by misrepresenting things and exaggerating things,” Prosser said. “I don’t know why I should give you any credence.”

After a stunned pause, McCabe answered, “You give me far greater credit than I probably deserve."

“I don’t think you deserve any credit,” Prosser shot back.

If Prosser could've given McCabe a swirly and stolen his lunch money, that would've been great too. One wonders if the Board of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign will ever recognize that one of their biggest roadblocks to effectiveness is the fact that a sanctimonious twit like McCabe is the point man for their group.

I guess he's not running on job creation.

Once again, the state will have to pony up cash to clean up Scott Walker's mess.

Temporary layoffs of 150 to 200 Milwaukee County employees will be done to avoid a 2009 year-end shortfall now projected at $3 million, County Executive Scott Walker said Wednesday.

The layoff news came just before the County Board's budget committee recommended its version of a 2010 budget that called for creation of a new $20 motor vehicle registration fee, or "wheel tax," to pay for transit. That fee would raise nearly $9 million and would be in addition to state and City of Milwaukee registration fees.

Wonder how much of that taxpayer "savings" will be offset by employees taking advantage of other government programs. Then again, no surprise here. When Walker was in the Assembly, it was all the rage to stick local government with the bills. Now, he continues to do the same thing in reverse. And should he be elected governor, I'm certain he'll revert to his original position.

Walker's never cared if another unit of government had to spend more as a result of his decisions, so long as his unit can spend less.

It's the Great Pumpkin, Terrence Wall

Good to see another bang-up GOP candidate get out of the gate so quickly in a statewide race...

Madison -- Wall Land Investment, LLC, one of multi-millionaire Madison developer Terrence Wall's companies, has reclassified $2 million in prime Dane County commercial real estate into "agriculture" property, which allows the company to eliminate $34,000 in local property taxes. Wall is already under criticism for using a Delaware post "office" box to possibly avoid paying Wisconsin business tax.

In 2008 Wall owed $34,000 in property taxes on the $2 million properties. Reclassifying the 2+ acres of prime commercial development, located behind the Marriott Hotel and adjacent to the West Beltline near Middleton, reduced the value to just $600. One Wisconsin Now visited the site and the only sign of agriculture was a dozen pumpkins in various stages of decomposition strewn over the two acres of valuable real estate.

More pictures here.

First the post office box in Delaware, now the shady pumpkin patch. Could someone tell this millionaire to hire a decent adviser? You know, he could at least put some effort into his agricultural enterprise. Maybe grow enough pumpkins that you can put up a stand and pay someone $8/hr. to sell them. How hard would that be?

What Wall is doing is legal. It's also the kind of crap that drives voters crazy. The electorate draws no moral distinction between tax avoidance (legal) and tax evasion (illegal). Wall may have to learn that the hard way.

And speaking of CCAP...

How funny is it that it took exactly three months after enacting primary enforcement of seat belt laws for our favorite bricklayer, Russ Decker, to get pulled over for just that?

He drinks and drives, he allegedly fails to wear his seatbelt. How many more traffic violations should we tolerate from Decker before someone submits the resolution to expel him?

But where are those good old-fashioned values...

... on which we used to rely?


On one hand, at least Sheridan never preached to us about how to run our lives. On the other hand, speculation is fun - just ask Jerry Bader. In fact, we should check Bader's website in about six hours. He'll probably have a post up about how he has it on good authority that the Speaker was having a clandestine relationship with Barb Lawton's husband.

Knowing leggies, their marriages typically fall apart because the leggie spouse ends up cheating on the non-leggie spouse. Often with a lobbyist, because really, being a legislator could only be sexy to someone else who is used to whoring themselves out. And why do lobbyists fawn over legislators? Usually because they want things.

Anyway, here's hoping some actual reporters sniff around this a little. Because from what I hear, what they might find could be very interesting.

A sack of oranges or a rubber hose?

Which was Babs Lawton beaten with while blindfolded and tied up in a closet until she agreed to clear the runway for Tom Barrett?

Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton announced Monday that she would not run for governor.

The decision further complicates the race for governor on the Democratic side. Gov. Jim Doyle has already announced that he would not run for re-election.

Lawton's revelation is the third stunning development by Democrats since August: Doyle's decision to back out, U.S. Rep. Ron Kind's decision to not run for governor and now Lawton's statement issued Monday morning. Lawton announced she was running in August, on the same day Doyle bowed out of seeking a third term.

Democratic supporters have said that President Barack Obama wants Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett to run for the office.

Rape is a pre-existing condition (or, why insurance companies will have public option shoved down their throats)

Perhaps the insurance companies should lay off a few underwriters and instead hire a few people with a shred of common sense and an understanding of what will and won't get them in a bunch of hot water.

Christina Turner feared that she might have been sexually assaulted after two men slipped her a knockout drug. She thought she was taking proper precautions when her doctor prescribed a month's worth of anti-AIDS medicine.

Only later did she learn that she had made herself all but uninsurable.

Turner had let the men buy her drinks at a bar in Fort Lauderdale. The next thing she knew, she said, she was lying on a roadside with cuts and bruises that indicated she had been raped. She never developed an HIV infection. But months later, when she lost her health insurance and sought new coverage, she ran into a problem.

Turner, 45, who used to be a health insurance underwriter herself, said the insurance companies examined her health records. Even after she explained the assault, the insurers would not sell her a policy because the HIV medication raised too many health questions. They told her they might reconsider in three or more years if she could prove that she was still AIDS-free.

Then there's this gem from later in the article:

A 38-year-old woman in Ithaca, N.Y., said she was raped last year and then penalized by insurers because in giving her medical history she mentioned an assault she suffered in college 17 years earlier. The woman, Kimberly Fallon, told a nurse about the previous attack and months later, her doctor's office sent her a bill for treatment. She said she was informed by a nurse and, later, the hospital's billing department that her health insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, not only had declined payment for the rape exam, but also would not pay for therapy or medication for trauma because she "had been raped before."

When some form of public option is signed into law (and I believe it will be), it's not going to be on the back of some broader intellectual argument. It's going to be on the back of stuff like this: anecdotal tales of insurance companies making preposterous and indefensible decisions about who they're going to cover and why. And when they get hung in the press for these decisions, they will have nobody to blame but themselves for the result.

Jeff Wood isn't the disease. Jeff Wood is the symptom.

Jeff Wood appears to have a problem, and I don't think I'm alone in hoping that he can conquer whatever demons are plaguing him. He's making some bad decisions, but he's not a bad guy.

But that said, let's not pretend that Jeff Wood is unique. Let's take a moment to look at the Legislature's Honor Roll of OWI offenders from this decade alone:

Jeff Wood (three times since election)
Russ Decker (he got plastered at a Tavern League reception, took the car out, and his Senate colleagues responded by making him Majority Leader a few years later. Classy.)
Dave Travis
Lorraine Seratti (she ran a stop sign, berated the cop and then blew twice the legal limit)
Frank Boyle (remember how he reportedly pissed his pants at the station?)
Jason Fields
Mike Ellis (former Senate Majority Leader)
Shirley Krug (former Assembly Minority Leader)

How pathetic is it that I just stared at this list for ten minutes wondering if I got everyone? Oh, and that's just in this decade, and those are just the ones who've been caught. If we went into the 90's, I could continue - Dave Plombon, Tom Springer, Roger Breske blowing a .27 in Fitchburg in 1996 and being unable to recite the alphabet, on and on and on.

Besides that, there are a hundred other stories of leggies getting bombed after work at local watering holes and doing stupid things. Some of those stories become the stuff of legend - like the time when a certain Northwoods legislator got completely toasted at Genna's and ended up falling down the stairs and landing on a lobbyist?

Here's the reality. If legislators weren't in denial about it, they would know the culture of alcoholism that they've fostered over the years is perhaps the single largest contributory factor to their own inability to enact meaningful reform. Would AssGOP leadership seriously like me to believe that they never knew Jeff Wood liked to drink during his many years as a member of their caucus? That he might have had a problem? That Wood was totally straightedge during those six years he spent in their caucus, and his issues only surfaced after he switched parties?

But you know what legislators say? They say things like "who am I to judge?" and "we're just having a good time" and "I don't want to piss so-and-so off because I might need their vote someday." The state Legislature is a disgusting culture of looking the other way when leggies behave badly. Nobody is individually responsible for another member's behavior, but they collectively tolerate a culture of alcoholism, adultery, and generally bad behavior. It's an embarrassment to the people of Wisconsin.

The real problem is that Republican and Democratic leaders in the Legislature don't have the stones to confront the bigger issue. The Assembly shouldn't expel Jeff Wood. It doesn't deserve the opportunity to make itself look like it's taking the problem seriously when it's actually looking for nothing more than a way to distract voters. But here are three suggestions that would perhaps help clean up the body for real. All could simply be added to the Assembly and Senate Rules.

- Legislators are not permitted to serve alcohol at fundraisers, nor attend fundraisers or lobbying events at which alcohol is served. Think of it as a personal behavior code for people who need one. Plus, it ends these interest group drinkathons at various venues around the Capitol once and for all.

- A legislator who incurs an OWI conviction in office automatically surrenders their seniority within the body and is barred from holding a leadership position for two full terms following the conviction. That means giving up chairmanships and surrendering any additional staff that their seniority or position affords them.

- A legislator who incurs a second OWI conviction while in the Legislature is automatically expelled from the body.

But would any legislator have the nerve to crash the party and bring all the fun to an end? Of course not. Even the ones it wouldn't affect, the ones who don't get sloppy, the ones who are upstanding people, they don't have the nerve to do it either. They're too worried about how it would hurt them politically.

Whatever happens in the coming days and weeks shouldn't be about Jeff Wood. It should be about addressing the very serious cultural problems that exist within the state Legislature, and how the Legislature intends to address them. Making Jeff Wood the goat might feel good but it doesn't fix anything.

Thank you, Tom Sykora

So Jeff Wood is at it again. You know Tom, if it weren't for you shoving Wood down everyone's throats when you decided to hang it up, this guy could've had his complete and total breakdown somewhere outside the public eye. Aren't your ex-constituents so lucky you hand-picked your successor?

Should Jeff Wood resign? At this point, yes. Should Columbia County revoke his bond and let his sorry ass sit in jail until his trial? At this point, yes. The guy is a menace to society. If you can't trust him to maintain absolute sobriety after being ordered not to by a court, how can you trust him to be anywhere near a vehicle?

Should the Assembly try and expel Jeff Wood? I don't think so. While his personal conduct is reprehensible, there's been lots of reprehensible conduct under that dome, and Jeff Wood hasn't been convicted of anything yet. If the Legislature didn't race to expel Scott Jensen or Chuck Chvala or Brian Burke or Gary George, whose indiscretions were actually job related, why should they expel Jeff Wood for his personal conduct, no matter how embarrassing it is?

On the other hand, should the voters of his district take out the recall petitions? Oh hell yeah. Those things can be circulated in just a few short weeks.

This should be a matter between Jeff Wood and his constituents, and I would hope that his constituents recognize what the right course of action is. And the Democrats should support and encourage those constituents to do the right thing, even though it means they will almost certainly see that seat go Republican.

Rep. Townsend to retire

Any chance a staffer could submit a drafting request to commemorate Rep. Townsend's retirement? I would only ask that, among other things, it make solitaire for Windows the official state card game.

Fond du Lac – After serving the residents of the Fond du Lac area for twelve years, State Representative John Townsend (R – Fond du Lac) announced today that he will not run for a seventh term in the November 2010 election.

“Twelve years is a good run in the State Assembly, and it has been a great honor to represent the residents of the 52nd Assembly District during that time,” Townsend said. He continued, “When I complete this term, I will have accumulated 47 years of public service, which includes time served in the U.S. Navy and Navy Reserves, the Fond du Lac City Council, and the Wisconsin State Assembly. During this period I estimate that I have been separated 30% of the time from Maria, my wife of 48 years. It is time to retire!”

Where's this guy's conscience clause?

Surely he deserves some job protection too, right conservatives?

A justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple last week because of concern for the children who might be born of that relationship.

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace for Tangipahoa Parish’s 8th Ward, also said it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

“I’m not a racist,” Bardwell said. “I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house. My main concern is for the children.”

What Bardwell is suggesting is that he won't marry interracial couples because his conscience tells him that it's the wrong thing to do. Furthermore, interracial marriage is no more provably wrong than abortion is provably wrong. And hey, he even directed the couple to another justice of the peace, so it's not like he was keeping them from getting married. He was simply refusing to provide a marriage license in violation of his personal beliefs.

So how long until honest, intellectually consistent conservatives stand up and defend this guy's right to refuse marriage licenses to interracial couples? Doesn't he have a right to honor his conscience too?

Don't excuse the "victims" of sexting without asking the real questions

This story is absurd.

Greenfield - A 14-year-old Whitnall High School student is accused of coercing teen girls into sending him sexually explicit photos of themselves.

Greenfield police on Wednesday said they suspect the freshman boy obtained nude and semi-nude photos of at least seven girls who sent the pictures from their cell phones or over the Internet. Police believe at least one of the girls sent the photos voluntarily...

The boy obtained nude photos by telling girls he would spread rumors about them, Wentlandt said. He also told some girls that unless they sent him nude photos of themselves, he would distribute nude photos of other girls that he already possessed, Wentlandt said.

And from WISN...

"Our suspect is just very good at complimenting these young girls and telling them how pretty they look. It starts out with him just asking for clothed pictures and then, 'Can you send me one a little more risqué, maybe in your bra and panties, and then from there he tries to get nude pictures,'" Greenfield police Detective Sgt. Dave Patrick said.

I'm not going to excuse the boy's actions, although someday his smooth-talking ways will make him the superstar of his fraternity. I'm also not willing to buy into another article that paints the girls as innocent, doe-eyed victims.

A boy goes up to a girl and says "text me a naked photo of you or I'm going to say bad things about you," and when the girl just rolls over and sends the photo, I'm supposed to believe that she's helpless and had no other choice?

What happened to good, old-fashioned, ratting the boy out to a teacher or other adult? What does it say about these girls, how they've been raised, and how their schools are run that they would apparently prefer to send the photo than stand up to a low-tech bully?

As best we know, this boy wasn't physically menacing. He wasn't making threats of violence or actual harm. He started with sweet talk that then turned into threats of rumor-mongering. Are today's young teens so emotionally fragile that they'd rather float naked pictures of themselves around school than have someone say something bad about them?

Or does physical modesty matter less to today's kids than it used to? Is there an ethos among pre-teens and teens today that we adults struggle to comprehend because it's not the prevailing ethic that we grew up with as children?

In the bigger picture, the boy is doing something that boys have tried to do in one form or another since the beginning of time. What's interesting to me is whether how girls respond to that behavior is changing.

More stupidity from the 8th CD

I have it on good authority that a certain ex-mayor in the 8th CD is in the process of meeting with some of the other prospective candidates in that district, supposedly in an attempt to assess whether he feels that they will be strong enough to put up a decent fight against the incumbent in 2010.

Does this not strike you as potentially the laziest start to a congressional campaign ever? "Yeah, I'll run, but only after I confirm that the rest of you all suck."

God, gays, and guns may have wrecked the GOP in Madison, but the other three G's - Gard, Graul, and Green - appear to have singlehandedly destroyed Northeast Wisconsin as a GOP stronghold. So now, a guy who could've run (and would've won) in 2006 is potentially stuck sniffing the other dogs in an attempt to decipher whether or not it's worth his time to run against a two-term incumbent.

McCormick would've beaten Kagen in 2006. Jadin would've beaten Kagen. Wieckert would've beaten Kagen. And now the 8th CD is in Dem hands because two of the G's were too bloody stupid to recognize up front that the 3rd G couldn't get elected dogcatcher in that district - something anyone with half a brain and an objective mind saw a mile away.

Nothing blinds in politics more than friendship and consulting fees, I guess.

How can you blame Wisconsin's tax climate...

... when the problem child doesn't pay taxes in the first place?

The Institute for Wisconsin’s Future has obtained data from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue detailing the amount of state corporate income tax paid by Brunswick in each of eight consecutive years, from 2000 through 2007.11 In each and every one of those years, Brunswick’s Wisconsin income tax was $0.00. Brunswick did not pay Wisconsin income tax through any of its subsidiaries; none of them filed a state tax return.

How did Brunswick manage to have zero state income tax liability? In 2000 Brunswick lost $96 million, so there were no profits to tax. But Brunswick was profitable for each of the next seven years, 2001 through 2007, with profits ranging from $78 million in 2002 to $385 million in 2005. Its total profits in the seven years were $1.1 billion.

The rest of the IWF report, "The Twisted Saga of Mercury Marine," is a good read. It does not paint a flattering picture of the company, but highlights a problem far too common in corporate America - an indifferent management that laughed all the way to the bank while running their company into the ground.

This isn't to say that Wisconsin doesn't need to reconsider its taxation approach when it comes to businesses. Personally, I think lower rates and an end to targeted giveaways would be a big step towards advertising Wisconsin as a place where all business is valued.

But this report should make it clear that Mercury Marine is a terrible poster child for that campaign, and conservatives who go that route should be laughed and ridiculed clear out of the discussion. Only a partisan hack could cite tax policy as the problem for a company that doesn't pay income tax, nor sales tax or property tax on its machinery and equipment.

Short on COLA, Obama pitches more welfare checks for seniors

Once again, America's Greediest Generation sets itself up to score at the expense of its grandkids.

WASHINGTON – There will be no cost of living increase for more than 50 million Social Security recipients next year, the first year without a raise since automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975.

Blame falling consumer prices. By law, cost of living adjustments are pegged to inflation, which is negative this year, the government said Thursday, because of lower energy costs. Social Security payments do not go down, even when prices drop.

The Obama administration, meanwhile, is pursuing a different way to boost recipients' income. On Wednesday, President Barack Obama called for a second round of $250 stimulus payments for seniors, veterans, retired railroad workers and people with disabilities.

For the record, I don't think the Bush tax cuts were any better. Both Bush and Obama were/are addicted to the notion of giving things away regardless of government's ability to fund them in real time. Unless you're running a surplus, most every revenue reduction should be required to be offset by spending cuts, and every spending increase should be offset by spending reductions or tax hikes.

Some things are okay to finance - infrastructure, for instance, or other spending in which the benefit of the purchase occurs over an extended period of time. Welfare checks for seniors do not meet that requirement. But balancing budgets lacks the sex appeal of rebate checks and giveaways for old people, especially in the voting booth.

I'd suggest throwing the Democrats out, but the fact is that partisan conservatives have their own special interests that they'll whore you out for as well. Welcome to the hell that is your two-party system, America.

Petri to crazies: Two bad parents better than one good one

The normally milquetoast Representative from the 6th, Tom Petri, apparently took some hits out of the Kool-Aid bowl at the Future Wisconsin conference this weekend. I'm particularly intrigued by the following, courtesy of WisPolitics:

Petri and (Glenn) Grothman said there are counterproductive incentives in place with the current welfare system, including a failure to encourage women to get married.

A woman who gets married or takes a better paying job faces the loss of food stamps, housing assistance and tax credits.

Petri explained that if a woman marries a man with a decent income under the current system, she would no longer be eligible for hundreds of dollars in welfare money a month.

“We know that even a troubled marriage with two parents is better for children,” Petri said.

Yes, I'd much rather have kids in a home where they can learn skills like verbal confrontation and domestic violence.

There are single parents who do a terrible job raising their kids. Similarly, there are two-parent families that shock their kids with dog collars, shoot them with pellet guns, and perform cosmetic dentistry with hammers.

I get that perhaps Petri was pandering to his audience a little, but that doesn't excuse the absolutely stupidity of his argument. What matters most is that a child have a functional and loving environment in which to exist, whether that environment is provided by a mom and dad, or one or the other, or two moms or two dads, or even extended family.

Tea Party tail tries to wag GOP dog

I laugh a lot when I read articles like today's Politico story, "Tea partyers turn on GOP leadership." It's such a predictable formula.

Unable to win a real battle, the tea partiers turn their sights towards mucking up the establishment party closest to them. So instead of focusing their efforts on vulnerable Democrats, they'll instead try in vain to sink the candidacy of Charlie Crist. Instead of focusing on Barbara Boxer, they focus instead on Carly Fiorina, the one person on the GOP side who might be able to defeat Boxer.

The conservatives of today are as politically clueless as the liberals of the 80's and 90's, who thought the answer to their party's waning fortunes was to purify the message and move left. Jimmy Carter lost the middle to Ronald Reagan in 1980, and the Democrats responded in the following two elections with a couple of lefty retreads, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. Then, in 1992, the Democrats turned back to a centrist governor from the south. End result? They won. Democrats in statehouses throughout America went through the same process in the mid-90's. Lose, move left, lose more, move right, pick up seats.

What the tea partiers can't bear to acknowledge is that on their own, the best they can ever aspire to is an existence akin to the Green Party. The Green Party is made up of people who are generally liberal and passionate, but whose individual interests are so fractured they collectively come off to the average Joe as a group of loosely-knit extremists. The tea parties are quickly becoming just that: a motley crew of ideologues, the G-20 protests without the violence.

Elections aren't won on the fringe. Almost to a letter, they're won in the middle. The key for the GOP in 2010 lies not in the teabaggers, but in finding a generally conservative message that appeals to disaffected voters in the middle of the electorate.

Those on the far right like to claim their delusional, inaccurate memories of Ronald Reagan as a blueprint for governance. The GOP needs to run the playbook that the real Ronald Reagan used: simple message, stay positive, win the middle.

Obama Wins Nobel Speech Prize

Whether you agreed with the decisions or not, at least one could find a plausible basis for granting the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore, or Yasser Arafat.

But Barack Obama? Seriously? For what, liberating teleprompters from subservience and calling attention to their plight? Ridding the world of malaria-carrying vectors, one pesky fly at at time?

Apparently the Nobels are handing out the award based on potential now. Here's hoping that in the next three to seven years, Barack Obama actually finds a way to earn this one retroactively. Until then, I can only suspect that Chris Matthews stuffed the ballot box.