Captain Irrelevant

The next time a conservative prattles off about how liberals just want government control of everything, you should probably direct them to über-conservative Glenn Grothman, the biggest control freak in the Capitol. It's not enough for him to just decide that his branch of government should seize control of local tax policy (TABOR) or tell women what do with their bodies (e.g. opposing emergency contraception for rape victims, among other bills). Now, the original teabagger wants control of the snowplows too.

State Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, said it's time for the state to step in on snow removal decisions (in Madison).

"It really wouldn't be the state's business if say the roads were inappropriately plowed in Manitowoc, because we don't have many state buildings in Manitowoc. But with the state Capitol here, the biggest university in the state here, it's important that Madison keep it's roads clean," said Grothman.

Grothman said he will introduce a bill to the state Legislature that would give the Wisconsin Department of Transportation authority for setting standards for salting and snow removal on Madison’s main roads.

The tragedy here is that, ideology aside, the mindless masses in Grothman's district traded in an able legislator in Mary Panzer in order to promote a guy who not only can't get anything done in Madison but seems to show no real interest in being taken seriously.

Way to go, Mr. Plow.

Screw terrorism...

... where's our goddamn war on lightning?

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics provides a wealth of statistical information on air traffic. For this exercise, I will look at both domestic flights within the US, and international flights whose origin or destination was within the United States. I will not look at flights that transported cargo and crew only. I will look at flights spanning the decade from October 1999 through September 2009 inclusive (the BTS does not yet have data available for the past couple of months).

Over the past decade, according to BTS, there have been 99,320,309 commercial airline departures that either originated or landed within the United States. Dividing by six, we get one terrorist incident per 16,553,385 departures...

Assuming an average airborne speed of 425 miles per hour, these airplanes were aloft for a total of 163,331,261 hours. Therefore, there has been one terrorist incident per 27,221,877 hours airborne. This can also be expressed as one incident per 1,134,245 days airborne, or one incident per 3,105 years airborne...

By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.

As someone who flies less than some but way more than most, let me just say that I don't give a rat's behind about what happened in Detroit. I care a lot more, however, about my government doing silly, stupid things to make it look like it's doing something, like keeping me from listening to my iPod or using a blanket on a plane.

Do us all a favor, fearful leaders. Either pony up the funds to install trace portal machines at all airports, or shut the hell up. Actually, now that I think about it, I'd rather you just did nothing. Relative to the number of lives we're actually saving, we're already spending too much on this crap. Get back to work on solving lightning.

Girls gone WHEDA

Guess it's easy to find time to party when your agency hasn't bothered to cut a loan to a first-time homebuyer in over a year.

MADISON - The Wisconsin agency that temporarily suspended its low-interest home loans because of the recession has thrown a $10,000 party to show its employees they're appreciated.

While many state agencies are forgoing the traditional holiday parties or holding a potluck gathering, the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority invited 150 employees to the Monona Terrace last week for its annual employee appreciation dinner.

Funny how WHEDA alleges that it can't finance loans because it can't raise capital, yet countless similar programs in other states have had no problems carrying on with business as usual, even during the worst of the recession.

Roger Roth for...

SCOTUS?



Seriously Roger, your web guy couldn't find a public domain photo of the U.S. Capitol? For real?

But hey, at least Roger's not claiming that he's actually in front of the Supreme Court in that picture, which is something Terri McCormick would probably do.