17,200 additional jobs in Wisconsin since January 1, 233,800 to go for the Governor

This chart showing the current figures for number of jobs added to the Wisconsin labormarket since January 1.  The total in Quarter 1 of 2011 is 17,200 jobs added.  At that pace, Governor Walker might be expected to meet his campaign promise of 250,000 new jobs by the end of his new term.  However, if he adds the additional 232,800 jobs, the employed work force will total 3,068,000.  In the last ten years, the employed work force figure has never gone above 2,950,000.

Will Recent Polling Help Protect the 2009 Wisconsin Domestic Partnership Law from Reversal?

A Table










A Clock

  




A Dog

All three of which people should not marry according to Lieutenant
Governor Rebecca Kleefisch.



Few elections in recent years have been more disappointing than the Wisconsin vote on Constitutional Referendum No. 1 in 2006.  Here is the referendum's text:

"Only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state."

Using the referendum to constitutionalize discrimination against a significant portion of our state's citizens was a shameful and partisan exercise that was duplicated around the country in states controlled by Republicans. 

There was already a state statute on Wisconsin's books prior to 2006 that prohibited recognition of same sex marriage. Nevertheless, the Catholic Bishops of Wisconsin came out strongly in support of the referendum. Madison's bishop, Robert Morlino, went to the extent of directing all his parish priests to play his recorded statement just days before the November 2006 election, in place of the usual Sunday homily of the parish priests, in which he urged parishioners to vote in favor of the referendum.  Obviously, as a Catholic cleric, Bishop Morlino did not have to worry about dealing with the impact of the constitutional provision on the self-fulfillment and sense of self-worth of his own children or grandchildren.  Nothing about the legal status of gay marriage or civil unions in Wisconsin prior to the referendum served to threaten church doctrine that gay marriage should not be afforded sacramental status by the church.  Having to necessarily support the second sentence of the referendum, in urging its adoption, made it seem a particularly sad but expectable position for officials of the church to take.  I've previously posted on how the church hierarchy now seems out of sync with a majority of American Catholics on gay rights. One has to wonder if the opposition to gay civil unions or gay marriage on the part of Catholic bishops would have been so forceful in the absence of the pedophile scandals rocking the church over the past ten years.

To make it onto the ballot in 2006, the referendum had to be twiced passed by both houses of the Wisconsin legislature, which it was on primarily party line votes.  In 2004, the Republicans controlled the Wisconsin Senate 18-15 and the Assembly 58-41.  In 2005, the Republicans controlled the Senate 19-14 and the assembly 60-39.

The votes by the two sessions of the state legislature were:

March 5, 2004 - Assembly voted 68-27 (at least 10 democrats voted in favor)
March 12, 2004 - Senate approved the referendum language 20-13 (at least 2 democrats voted in favor)
December 6, 2005 - State Senate voted in favor of the referendum 19-14 along party lines.
February 28, 2006 - Assembly voted a second time to put the referendum on the ballot.

In the November election in 2006, the referendum passed 59% to 41% state-wide.  Only four counties had "no" voters in the majority:  Dane, Eau Claire, Iowa and Portage.  Dane County voters disapproved of the measure by over 2 to 1.  In the other three "No" counties the margins against the referendum were very small.  In more Republican counties such as Waukesha and Washington the "yes" votes out-polled the state-wide averages by three to six percentage points.

It is questionable whether the referendum would pass today in Wisconsin.  Nate Silver does a political column for the New York Times, and recently noted how dramatic the recent polling has been in showing the change in attitude towards gay marriage in the United States:

A poll from CNN this week is the latest to show a majority of Americans in favor of same-sex marriage, with 51 percent saying that marriages between gay and lesbian couples “should be recognized by the law as valid” and 47 percent opposed.

This is the fourth credible poll in the past eight months to show an outright majority of Americans in favor of gay marriage. That represents quite a lot of progress for supporters of same-sex marriage. Prior to last year, there had been just one survey — a Washington Post poll conducted in April 2009 — to show support for gay marriage as the plurality position, and none had shown it with a majority.

Here is a graph from Silver's April 20 blog post showing a regression analysis of the polling since the mid-90's:



Based on the graph the election results in Wisconsin in 2006 on the gay marriage/civil union banning referendum mirrored pretty closely the nationwide polling in 2006.

Since 2006, the state passed a domestic partnership law which provided for some of the legal protections afforded to married couples.  You can read analyses of the protections here and here.  The Marquette University Law School Faculty blog has speculated that the Walker administration and Republican legislature may be contemplating a reversal of the law:

Moreover, there are some indications that the Walker Administration may be planning to initiate an effort to repeal the Domestic Partnership law — in late March, Gov. Walker dismissed Lester Pines, the lawyer retained by his predecessor to represent the state in defending the law.  Given the razor-thin margins by which the partnership registry law passed in 2009, the current Republican majority clearly has the power to repeal the law should it be inclined to do so.

Lieutenant Governor Kleefisch took an interesting stand on the new domestic partnership law before the November 2010 election (as reported by Daniel Bice in the Journal Sentinel):

Liberal bloggers recently turned up an interview that Kleefisch, a former television reporter, had done in January with an evangelical Christian radio station. In the talk, she criticized the state's new domestic partnership registry, calling it fiscally irresponsible and contrary to the Bible.

"This is a slippery slope in addition to that," Kleefisch said. "At what point are we going to OK marrying inanimate objects? Can I marry this table or this, you know, clock? Can we marry dogs? This is ridiculous. Biblically, again I'm going to go right back to my fundamental Christian beliefs, marriage is between one man and one woman.

(Kleefisch later expressed regret for her remarks.)

Hopefully the recent polling on public acceptance of gay marriage will cause the Governor and state legislature to rethink any plans they may have formed to reverse the domestic partnership law.

Here is a graph that may hopefully make some sense to some thinkers on the issue, even if the logic of it may be lost on the Lieutenant Governor:

Thanks to the Prose before Hos Network for the Graph.

Easter Sunday 2011

A portion of
"Christ on the Cross between the Two Thieves"
by Rubens


"I am with you always, to the very end of the age."


In the midst of on-going strife, today was the perfect one for Christians to both recall and humbly acknowledge that Jesus suffered on the cross for Republicans, Democrats, Muslims, Evangelicals, Atheists, Protestants, Agnostics, Catholics, public and private labor union members, Tea Party members, the Democratic 14, the Fitzgerald brothers, Scott Walker, Marty Biel, Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, Rachel Maddow, Rush Limbaugh and, of course, the Koch brothers.

Happy Easter.
Happy Passover.

Trump Trumps the GOP Field

The Donald







The New York Times reported this morning on the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll that finds increasing pessimism among Americans over the economic outlook of the country.  President Obama does not do well in the new poll, with the public's disapproval of his handling of the economy at an all-time high of 57 percent.

All of this should be good news to the Republican party, as so much of its energy on both the national and state level seems to be directed at stymieing the nascent recovery of the economy for political gain.  But the Republican party has its own problem:  identifying a viable candidate to run against the Prez. 

The Pew Research Center pointed out in its weekly News Interest Index survey that half of Americans can't name a single potential Republican presidential candidate for 2012, and of those respondents that could, Donald Trump is by far the best known candidate. 

The Pew survey data were collected April 14 to 17, from a nationally representative sample of 1,015 adults.

Money Quotes:

Donald Trump has drawn a lot of attention in a slow-starting race for the GOP nomination. Roughly a quarter of all Americans (26%) name Trump as the possible Republican presidential candidate they have heard most about lately, far more than volunteer any other candidate. Among Republicans, 39% name Trump as most visible – more than all the other GOP potential candidates combined.

To be sure, Trump is standing out in a contest that has yet to draw much public interest or media coverage. In fact, about half of all Americans (53%) could not name anyone when asked which GOP candidate they have been hearing the most about

 

Graph from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 

.

Off until Friday

Work commitments (I have tuition bills to pay!) will keep me from any posts through Thursday afternoon.  Check back Thursday evening.

Exporting Democracy to the Middle East has Caused Shortage at Home

From the Borowitz report today:

Exporting Democracy Has Led to Shortages of it in U.S., Experts Say

Wisconsin, Florida Hardest Hit

 

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – The U.S. policy of exporting democracy abroad has meant that there is very little of it left at home.

That is the grim assessment of a new study commissioned by the University of Minnesota, which predicts that if the U.S. continues to export democracy at its current pace it may completely run out of it at home by the year 2015.

“We have been exporting democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq while there are severe shortages of it in Wisconsin and Florida,” said Professor Davis Logsdon, who supervised the study.  “This is madness.”

Citing the study, Speaker of the House John Boehner said today, “It has been clear to me for some time that we must explore alternative forms of government, such as oligarchy or plutocracy.”

Noting that democracy originated in Greece, Mr. Boehner added, “We must reduce our dependence on foreign sources of government.”

The University of Minnesota study contains several proposals, such as outsourcing the U.S. government to the world’s largest democracy, India.

“The work done by Congress could be accomplished much more efficiently by a series of electronic phone prompts,” the study recommends.

But Mr. Boehner warned that eliminating Congress entirely would have disastrous effects: “That would destroy entire sectors of our economy, especially the prostitution industry.”

Speaking from one of the states hardest hit by the democracy shortage, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker downplayed the seriousness of the problem, calling democracy “overrated.”

“Teachers may teach our children that democracy is important,” he said, “but the solution is to get rid of the teachers.”

Now we are engaged in a great Civil War - no, it's not about the Budget Repair Bill

The bombardment of Fort Sumter, April 12-13, 1861.







This week is the sesquicentennial of the opening shots of the long and bloody U.S. Civil War.  It is a just a tad bit unsettling to realize that its been 50 years since I sat as a thirteen year old in Johnson Hagood stadium in Charleston watching in awe the centennial celebration pageant.  At the time I didn't like the ending to the pageant, but I eventually outgrew that.

A special Exit 142A prize will go to the reader who is first to correctly identify the person who pulled the lanyard on the first volley fired at Colonel Anderson and his garrison in Charleston harbor at 4:30 AM on April 12, 1861.  A second, lesser, Exit 142A prize will go to the person who identifies the first Union officer to fire back once the sun came up.  Hint:  You hard-core baseball fans have probably heard of him.

The violent events 150 years ago this week may serve to put our own Budget Repair Bill battle in better perspective.  Back then the battle was fought over an evil system that deprived an oppressed group of people from having a say over their lives.  Today's battle is over . . . . . .  Uh, never mind.

During the actual 34 hour siege on Sumter (4000 confederate shells fired, 1000 union shells fired) no Union soldiers were killed or wounded.  Likewise, during the six week siege on the capitol in Madison this winter no one was injured, if you don't count that Fox guy who got nudged in his arm, and Senator Grothman, who was surrounded and had to be rescued from near certain death by Senator Erpenbach.

One other similarity of note between then and now.  When Brigadier General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard ("The Little Creole") ordered the start to hostilities, many southern leaders believed that the Northern states would quickly roll over and let the Southern states break off from the union rather than go to war over the issue of slavery.  The Confederacy's Secretary of War Leroy Walker, who had issued the order to General Beauregard to fire on Sumter, addressed his fellow Alabamans in Montgomery after learning that Anderson had surrendered the fort to the South:

"No man can foretell the events of the war inaugurated, but I will venture to predict that the flag which now floats on the breeze above Fort Sumter will before the first of May float over the dome of the old Capitol at Washington, and if they choose to try Southern chivalry, and test the extent of Southern resources, will eventually float over Faneuil Hall."

It was quite simply a massive miscalculation of the response of the citizens in the north, and of the resolve of Lincoln.

Attribution: Map by Hal Jespersen, www.posix.com/CW

Classiest Politicians in America - Installment #5 - Sen. Jon Kyl, R-AZ

Gail Collins



Gail Collins, easily the drollest columnist in America today, addresses Senator Jon Kyl, R- Arizona, in today's column in the New York Times .

Money quotes:

Part of the price of keeping the government operating this week is another debate over the financing of Planned Parenthood. Whoopee.

At least it’ll give us a chance to reminisce about Senator Jon Kyl, who gave that speech against federal support for Planned Parenthood last week that was noted for: A) its wild inaccuracy; and B) his staff’s explanation that the remarks were “not intended to be a factual statement.”

This is the most memorable statement to come out of politics since Newt Gingrich told the world that he was driven to commit serial adultery by excessive patriotism.

The speech in question was Kyl’s rejoinder to the argument that Planned Parenthood provides a critically important national network of women’s health services.

“You don’t have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your cholesterol or your blood pressure checked. If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does,” Kyl declared.

Planned Parenthood says that abortions, which are not paid for with federal money, constitute 3 percent of the services that the organization provides. That’s quite a gap. But only if you’re planning on going factual.

Anyhow, that was definitely a high point. Next year, Kyl is retiring from the Senate and returning to the private sector, where he will have leisure to contemplate that this was the single moment of his public career for which he became nationally famous.

. . . .

What we have here is a wide-ranging attack on women’s right to control their reproductive lives that the women themselves would strongly object to if it was stated clearly. So the attempt to end federal financing for Planned Parenthood, which uses the money for contraceptive services but not abortion, is portrayed as an anti-abortion crusade. It makes sense, as long as you lay off the factual statements.

 
Here is Steven Colbert's analysis of the attack on Planned Parenthood by Kyl and Fox and Friends:

The Colbert Report
Tags: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Governor Walker Wants to Root For Peyton Manning

Do you want to root for this guy?





The right wing blogosphere has been pulsating over the fact that Governor Walker submitted an Op Ed piece to the New York Times, which it rejected for publication.  In the piece the Governor submitted in late March, he presents a defense of the reforms he has tried to enact in Wisconsin to downsize government and eliminate collective bargaining for government workers.  You can read what the Governor submitted here at his official web site. 

The Governor described the rejected article as "The One Opinion Piece the New York Times Didn't Want You to Read."  Playing off the right-wing narrative that the main stream media is controlled by liberals, this title was undoubtedly assigned to the rejected Op Ed article to convey the impression that it refutes the arguments being advanced by liberals against the Governor's Budget Repair Bill and its union-busting reforms.

On reading Governor Walker's Op Ed piece, one paragraph stuck out to me:

This concept works well in Indiana.  In 2005, Governor Mitch Daniels reformed collective bargaining.  In turn, the government got more efficient, more effective and more accountable to the public.  Governor Daniels even encouraged employees to come forward with ways to save taxpayer dollars and they responded.  Eventually, the state was able to reward top performing employees.  This is true reform – making government work for the people.

The United States can be viewed as 50 separate laboratories experimenting in the best ways to collect and spend public money to advance the well-being of their citizens and economies. For some time I have been curious as to whether there was some state among the 50 which Governor Walker felt might be paradigmatic in advancing a pro-business, anti-union, leaner approach to revenues and expenditures.  I had written off Mississippi, despite the frequent Capitol Square protest signs saying "Wississippi" is what the governor sought.  Frankly, I had written off most of the southern states other than Virginia and North Carolina as they tend to be pretty low on the quality of life, quality of services, quality of education and quality of health care scales.  Indiana had been a possibility for me, however, because of all the publicity that its Republican Governor, Mitch Daniels, had garnered on the national scene as a government reformer. Newsweek had even featured him on its cover, and David Brooks had written admirably of his tenure as Indiana's governor.

Following up on his rejected Op Ed article, the governor reinforced  that Mitch Daniels is his model of a modern reformist governor when he spoke today to Wisconsin Public Radio about his first hundred days in office. The governor pointed out that Mitch Daniels' favorability rating dropped significantly below his own current rating after he eliminated public union collective bargaining in Indiana by executive order.  Governor Walker then pointed out that Daniels won re-election in 2008 with 58% per cent of the vote, as people began to appreciate how successful his policies had been.

So let's assume that Wisconsin can be more like Indiana, as the governor apparently wants to see happen.  For that matter, let's assume that Wisconsin can become just like Indiana.  What would that mean for the Badger State?  

Here are just a few ways Wisconsin would change:

1.  Wisconsin would drop from 16th place all the way down to 49th on Forbes's latest ranking of America's greenest states based on clean air, water quality, waste disposal, carbon footprint per capita, consumption rates, energy efficiency, LEED building square footage per capita, and the like.

2.  The unemployment rate in Wisconsin would jump from 7.4% to 8.8%.  The state would go from the 14th best unemployment rate to the 27th best.   Over the past three and a half years, during the Doyle administration and the Daniels administration, Wisconsin's monthly unemployment rate has been pretty consistently about one full percentage point below Indiana's.

3.  The average annual wage per employed worker would drop from $40,190 to $38,330. 

4.  The median annual income would drop by over $5,000.

5.  Twenty percent of our state would be living in poverty compared to its current fourteen percent.

6.  The average employee contribution to family health insurance provided by his or her employer would climb from 20% to 25%.

7.  The percentage of citizens uninsured for medical expenses would rise from 10% to 13%.  The percentage  of uninsured children would rise from 5% to 8%.

8.  The infant mortality rate, teen death rate and AIDS diagnosis rate would all rise dramatically.

9.  The high school graduation rate would go from the second best in the United States at 86%, one-half of a percent behind only lily-white Vermont (95% white population) down to 32nd best, with a 72% graduation rate.

10.  Our flagship state university would drop from 14th ranked among public universities in Newsweek's rankings down to 32nd. 

11.  State and local monies spent on natural resources would be almost halved.

12.  We would be converted from a progressive tax system graduated based on rising income to a regressive flat tax.  While the state tax rate would be much lower than any of Wisconsin's rates, we would also pay income taxes levied by counties at rates as high as 3.3%. 

13. Our sales tax would jump from 5% to 7%, another regressive way of raising revenue.

14. The per capita state and local taxes paid would drop by about $586, from $6,088 to $5,502, but we would be spending about $400 less per capita on education per year.

15.   We would be driving on Interstate 65 between Chicago and Indianapolis and Indianapolis and Louisville, instead of Interstate 90/95 between Milwaukee and Minneapolis via Madison.  Having just come back from SC, I can tell you I-65 is a sad excuse for an interstate highway.

16.   We would be rooting for Peyton Manning.

Governor, I think we just need to get back to being the best Wisconsin we can be.

GOP Voters in Mississippi - Those who favor Palin are more likely to think inter-racial marriage should be illegal.

Public Policy Polling just published a report on its recent late March polling in Mississippi of likely Republican voters to ferret out who among the current potential GOP presidential candidates most closely trails Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour's down-home popularity.   The closest potential contenders behind Barbour (who enjoys 37% support) are:

Mike Huckabee   -   19%
Sarah Palin          -   10%
Newt Gingrich     -   10%
Mitt Romney       -     6 %
Michelle Bachman, Tim Pawlenty & Ron Paul  - a smattering each.

For some reason, presumably to tie racial attitudes into the preferences of more conservative voters for advancement of some political agenda, the 400 likely GOP voters were also asked by PPP whether they felt that inter-racial marriage should  be illegal or not.  This question was simply put:

Do you think inter-racial marriage should be legal or illegal?

(No indication in the report whether those being polled knew that it could not be made illegal under the U.S. Constitution (and hopefully under Mississippi's as well), but presumably the majority of responders knew this.  I don't say this tongue in cheek.  I would guess that if you asked 400 citizens of Mississippi which state produced more milk, Wisconsin, California or Dairyland, Dairyland would get a smattering of votes.)

The results were:

Inter-racial marriage should be illegal -   46 %
Inter-racial marriage should be legal  -    40 %
No opinion                                      -     14%

That's the kind of loaded question that you might expect to elicit a little prevarication, so it is logical to assume that 46% answering that they felt inter-racial marriage should be illegal represents an under-reporting as to that social attitude.

What is most interesting is whom among the GOP candidates for president were most favorably viewed by the poll responders who are opposed to the legality of inter-racial marriage. 

Sarah Palin's net favorability among the GOP voters who think interracial marriage should be illegal (+55 at 74/19) is 17 points higher than it is with those who think interracial marriage should be legal (+38 at 64/26.)

By contrast, the net favorability numbers of Mitt Romney, clearly the most moderate of the GOP candidates covered by the survey, saw the opposite trend. He's at +23 (53/30) with voters who think interracial marriage should be legal but 19 points lower at just +4 favorability rating (44/40) with those who think it should be illegal.

Turning back the clock 150 years.

Applying Occam's Razor: Nickolaus dumb, not devious

Kathy Nickolaus, Waukesha County Clerk


What a wild world we live in.  Very late on Tuesday night,  I made a crack in a post about whether Fond du Lac and Washington counties, Republican strongholds that had yet to report any votes, could turn into the Duval Counties of Wisconsin, and determine the election.  Duval County is the talismanic vote-rigging county that propelled Lyndon Johnson to the national scene in the U.S. Senate primary election in Texas in 1948. (Back in the halcyon days when Democratic primaries decided the officeholders in Texas, like the Republican primaries do today.)   Robert Caro wrote about the vote-rigging in Ascent to Power, one volume of his three-part Pulitzer Prize winning biography of LBJ.  For a political junky, it's a "you gotta read."  

So, when I read the news of the Waukesha County bombshell while driving back from a vacation in South Carolina late on Thursday night, I wondered the same thing that many Wisconsinites did:  Did Kathy Nickolaus, the Waukesha County clerk, deliver for the Prosser camp?   It was only a fleeting thought. 

I don't particularly care for conspiracy theory extremists, whether they are Birthers or Waukesha Tallyists.  The GAB can send their investigative team in, but all they will uncover is that Ms. Nickolaus is not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.  The Waukesha turnout looked comparably light on Wednesday morning.  14,000 additional votes made the county turnout percentage more reasonable, not less.  There is no way that the individual municipal clerks could be pulled into a conspiracy to rig the tally.  Ms. Nickolaus' explanation for her error Tuesday night holds water.  Occam's Razor: the most rational explanation for an event is the simplest one consistent with all the facts.  The new vote margin for Prosser is going to easily withstand a recount.  Had I been advising Ms. Kloppenburg, I would have encouraged her not to have declared victory on a 200 vote margin before the initial canvass process had been finished.  She looked a little too "eager" to get her fitting.

At least now the Governor can acknowledge the truth.  The race was about him.

Town of Lake Mills Tallies Not in From Jefferson County

Rock Lake, Lake Mills, WI



The Lake Mills Leader reports there could be 750 uncounted votes in Town of Lake Mills.  In the February Primary this precinct cast 173 votes with 97 for Prosser and 76 for Kloppenburg and others.  56% Prosser in February.

Jefferson County as a whole went 67% in the February Primary, but only 58% yesterday.

This precinct in Jefferson County shouldn't be much of a swing.

How the Big 20 Voted - Blue Counties Slightly Exceed Red Ones in Turnout Percentage

As of 9:10 AM this morning, all but 24 precincts are reported, Justice Prosser has a 835 vote lead, and it is unlikely that there are more than 6000 votes to still include in the final tally  These votes would have to cut 57 percent to Kloppenburg to make up the ground.  Seems like a tall order.

Here are the vote totals and turnout percentages (of registered voters, reported by GAB as of August 2010) as to the 20 largest counties that tend to vote consistently in favor of one party:

The other 52 counties cast 391,976 votes, voting at a 41 percent clip.

Isthmus Live-Blog Coverage of Supreme Court Race

Best tweet at 2:30 AM:  "I picked a hell of a week to stop sniffing glue."

12 Precincts in Milwaukee County and 8 Precincts in Sauk County to tell the tale

Current Status
3596 of 3630 precincts reported, or 99%
Prosser                733,074  (.50019958)
Kloppenburg       732,489   (.49980042)
Kloppenburg trails by 585 votes


There are likely some 10,000 to 11,000 votes still outstanding in the Supreme Court race as of 1:38 AM CDT this morning.  Kloppenburg trails by 585 votes or four one hundreths of a percent, also = .000399.  Very small fraction. 

The outcome depends on where the precincts are in Milwaukee and Sauk County.  There are some very red precincts in Milwaukee County. Kloppenburg may get a little help from Ashland, Crawford and Dunn Counties, which have a few precincts outstanding still.  If I am right about the 11,000 votes still out, they have to break about 53% to 47% to Kloppenburg to pull her ahead by a skosh.

No expense incurred by either candidate for requesting a recount under Wisconsin law as the margin will be well less than one-half of one percent.  No automatic recounts in Buckyland.

I am going out on a limb and projecting that by tomorrow morning, Kloppenburg will be marginally ahead in the race.

To bed, perchance to sleep and wake up to an answer.

Too close to call - Will turn on Marathon, Eau Claire, Milwaukee and Sauk Counties

According to the AP, there are 32 precincts in Marathon County out, where Prosser is leading; 21 precincts in Eau Claire County out still, where Kloppenburg is leading; 12 precincts in Milwaukee County out, where Kloppenburg is leading; and 8 precincts in Sauk County, where Kloppenburg is leading.  It will be less than 2,000 votes separating the two, out of 1,450,000 cast, or one tenth of one percent.

Kenosha County is in now.

Kloppenburg wins 53% of vote today, Prosser took 56% of the vote in the primary.  30% of registered voters in Kenosha voted.

Dane County Turnout will exceed 60%

Dane County, with most of Madison precincts still outstanding is just shy of 50% turnout so far.  Kloppenburg leads in Dane County with 73% of the vote.

Winnebago County Results

Winnebago County, with 73 of 76 precincts reporting, voted 65% for Prosser in the primary and 52% today.  The turnout in Winnebago should end up in the 40% of registered voters range.

Columbia County Results

Columbia County is almost completely in.  Justice Prosser received 49% of the primary vote and 45% today.
Lots of votes outstanding in Waukesha County (less than a third of precincts in), no votes from Washington County or Fond Du Lac County yet.  Will Fond Du Lac and Washington be the Duval Counties of Wisconsin?

The Color Counties - Green and Brown - Fully in

Brown and Green Counties are completely in now.

In the February Primary, Justice Prosser received 57% of the votes against the three primary challengers in Brown County.  He received 55% tonight, with Brown County voting at a 44% turnout of registered voters.

In Green County, Kloppenburg received 55% of the vote.  In the primary, the three challengers to Prosser received only 52%.  The turnout in Green County was over 51% of registered voters.

GAB all wet. Off on projected turnout for Spring Election by 600,000?

Kevin Kennedy, Director and General Counsel of the GAB

Kevin Kennedy of GAB had predicted a Spring 2011 election turnout of 874,000 voters.  That estimate will be off by 500,000 to 700,000 votes by the end of the evening.

Classiest Politicians in America - Installment #4 - Senator Kapanke's windshield

A ding. (Or if you prefer, a dink.)






Capital Times On-line Capitol Report: 

Senator Kapanke's claim that his automobile windshield was cracked by a Capitol protestor the night he voted in favor of the Budget Repair Bill vote doesn't hold up to police scrutiny.  Money quotes:

After inspecting the vehicle March 16, the officer told Kapanke the "chip and the crack" looked like a stone chip and "not someone hitting the windshield," according to the police report.

The report indicates two officers with the State Highway Patrol, including an accident reconstruction specialist, also examined Kapanke's windshield.

They determined "the angle of the impact of the object hitting the windshield is consistent with a stone being picked up from another vehicle tire and launched into the air," causing the crack.

On March 16, another officer with the Capitol Police reviewed video from a parking garage camera located near Kapanke's car. The officer reported no one was seen near Kapanke's car or damaging the windshield March 9.

I am sure his comprehensive insurance carrier doesn't care.  But the original story  was sure more effective at depicting the protestors as vandals and visigoths.

Union-busting laws to be folded into Biennium Budget Bill and Re-Passed?

An Open Capitol Building





The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting on its political blog today that Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald has said that if the union-busting measure in the stripped BRB is invalidated or held up in the courts, the provisioins could be stuck into the biennium budget bill and repassed.

Money quotes:

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) said Tuesday that the measure could be included in the 2011-'13 state budget and passed a second time if the bill remains hung up in court.

"Ultimately, it'll be part of the state budget if it isn't fixed or dealt with in the courts," Fitzgerald said. Previously, Fitzgerald had said only that the measure wouldn't be taken up again and passed as a stand-alone bill.

Dane County Voters Reporting Huge Turnouts in Early Stages of Voting Today

Isthmus is live-blogging voter number slip reports from voters on turn-out in their wards around Dane County here.  Some representative comments:

Was #154 at 5:00pm on Primary day. A friend voted at the same place at 9:00am today and was #420. Good turnout!

Voter #898 at 11:15am, O'Keefe. No line to vote, but there was one for the hot lunch in the cafeteria. :)

Steady stream of voters in Middleton. I was # 911 at 10:30. Looks like a good turnout today.

Voted 9:45am at High Pt Church - far westside Madison. #275. Nearly 3X count at about the same time in spring primary.

I was voter #968 in the Town of Windsor at noon. Normal spring election I would have been about 200 or less. It will be an interesting night!

I voted at Kennedy school right when polling opened at 7 and was already number 33. Usually I am number 5 or 6.

No.864 at Our Redeemer on the west side, short lines but getting busy for lunch rush. Definitely higher turnout than Nov

No. 1091 at 12:45 at O'Keefe. Urban Bohemia Represent!

We were #425 and #426 at Goodman Community Ctr at about 10am, fantastic turnout

The predictions of a fifty percent or more turnout in Dane County seem to be panning out.

The Party of No? Where's the Dem14's budget plan?

Heroic Wisconsin 14?

Time Magazine is inviting its readers to consider voting for whether the Dem 14 deserve to be listed among the 100 most influential people in the world for 2011.   They are described as "revolutionizing the concept of filibuster" by denying the Republican controlled Senate a quorum to act on the Budget Repair Bill in February and early March.  After the BRB was "supposedly" passed in its stripped down version, the Dem 14 returned to a huge Capitol Square rally on March 12 in which they were treated like rock stars.  The rally and celebratory return made the Guardian the next day.

Lost in the furor over the budget repair bill and the stripping away of collective bargaining rights, today's Supreme Court election proxy war, and the massive recall efforts is the fact that the state needs to turn its attention to passing a budget for 2012-2013.

On the federal level, so far Paul Ryan is the only Washington politician with the courage to put forward a budget plan for addressing the staggering federal debt.  The President is adopting a "rope-a-dope" approach, waiting to assess the public reaction to the Ryan plan. 

In Wisconsin, Governor Walker put out his biennium budget proposal on March 1.  Like it or hate it, the proposal was a comprehensive plan for budgeting state government for the next two years.

Here is the only public pronouncement I have found from Senator Erpenbach discussing the Governor's budget:

"It is clear that Governor Walker's biennial budget will eliminate 2,500 state jobs and will result in local job loss of more than 11,000 employees. The work will still have to be done; garbage still needs to be picked up, kids still need to go to school, prisons still need to be guarded. Taxpayers will still have to pay for this work to be done. Clearly this is about privatizing public work in Wisconsin. It is a hostile corporate takeover of Wisconsin government. I don't think the people of this state will fall for the bait and switch."  (March 1 Press Release)

Here is the only public pronouncement I have located on-line from Senate Minority leader Mark Miller, from March 2:

Now we have seen the Governor unveil a budget that takes the Republican attacks on middle class and working families and the values they hold dear to a whole new level.

What the Governor has proposed is nearly $1.5 billion in devastating cuts to public schools, local fire and police protection, and the University of Wisconsin.

The Governor's budget will increase class sizes, layoff teachers, police and firefighters will be laid off, and tuition will increase.

Programs that help seniors stay in their homes and afford their prescription drugs, help get people access to affordable health care, and help families care for family members that are disabled will be threatened.

Nonetheless, the Governor was able to find money to give to large corporations that avoid paying their fair share.

The Governor's budget bill is quite simply balancing the budget on the backs of the middle class and working families; seniors, people with disabilities, children and small businesses.

It is not enough for the Democrats in the Wisconsin legislature to be the party of No.  It is time for them to put forth their own plan for balancing the budget with fewer and different cuts than those proposed by the Republicans.   Perhaps their plan will not be as aggressive at addressing the state's structural deficit as the Governor's.  Perhaps it will call for more fees and taxes for enhancing revenue.  Maybe the Dems' plan will be more optimistic in terms of projecting the future stream of revenue under the existing tax structure.  But they need to take a stand and not simply snipe at the Republican plan as being out of sync with Wisconsin values.  If all they do is snipe, they don't get my vote for Time Magazine superstars.

The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight - Part 3 - The All Points Bulletin on the Dem14

After Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald put out an APB on the Dem14, apparently the Wisconsin Department of Justice informed  him that perhaps it wasn't the best thing for him to expose Wisconsin law enforcement officials to a possible lawsuit for unlawful arrest.

According to this news report, Fitzgerald ordered the State's crime information network to put out the detention order, in the form of a Senate Resolution, ordering that any of the Dem14 who might be located in the state by a law enforcement officer be taken into custody. After the detention order was put on the network, Kevin Potter, of the Wisconsin Department of Justice sent an email to Scott Fitzgerald:

"We would strongly recommend that you attempt to get the Senate's Order to Detain out of the system, i.e. to the extent possible indicate publicly that it has been withdrawn so that law enforcement do not rely upon it and attempt to enforce it, thereby creating unnecessary liability exposure to them and the state,"

Fitzgerald responded via his personal attorney, Jim Troupis, three hours later: "We are not withdrawing the Order."

There was no explanation in the article for why the DOJ couldn't have simply pushed a button and deleted the inappropriate entry located on the crime information network. 

So based on this news account, you had a politician disregarding the state's top law enforcement officer, and following the advice of his personal attorney, even though he had been told he might be exposing innocent law enforcement officers to liability. Little wonder the state's GOP leadership is so popular with law enforcement right now.

Money Quote:

"The whole thing was a mess," Fitzgerald said. "You just can't compel a senator to come back to the chamber."

He said police agencies refused to carry out his March 3 order to forcibly detain the senators.

"There was no cop in the state that would enforce it," he said.

Scott, you should have hired Dog, the Bounty-Hunter.

Diocese of Madison Circulates Voter's Guide - Right to Life Trumps Gay Rights

Bishop Robert Morlino
Diocese of Madison


The Diocese of Madison sent out an email to the faithful today reminding everyone to vote tomorrow.  After pointing out the only state-wide race, the Supreme Court contest, the email encouraged its readers to open an attached voter guide from the Diocese of LaCrosse, on the Supreme Court candidates.  You can see the voter guide here. 

The voter guide provides the reader six organizations and politicians that endorse each of the candidates.  But what is interesting is the order of the endorsers that are listed. They aren't listed alphabetically.  For Justice Prosser the top entity listed is Wisconsin Right to Life.  For Joanne Kloppenburg, the top entity listed is Equality Wisconsin. 

Equality Wisconsin's web page describes its mission:

Equality Wisconsin has been working to win concrete legislative improvements in the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in Wisconsin since 2001. Equality Wisconsin Fund breaks down barriers in our diverse communities through public education and organizing.

The Diocese of Madison continues sending its two-trick pony into the political policy ring.  Abortion is evil.  Homosexuality is inherently disordered.   Full stop.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church instructs Catholics about social conscience:    

Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right. It is by the judgment of his conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law.  Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1778

It is important for every person to be sufficiently present to himself in order to hear and follow the voice of his conscience. This requirement of interiority is all the more necessary as life often distracts us from any reflection, self-examination or introspection.  Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1779

Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment. . . . For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God. . . . His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.  Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1776

The Church exhorts its members to listen to the voice of their own conscience on social and political issues.  A well-informed Catholic conscience can look beyond the quick and easy analysis proposed by others, even if those others are diocesan leaders.

Earlier I posted about polls showing that Catholics in America as a group are more open to equal rights for gays and lesbians than members of other Christian traditions, and Americans generally.   Those Catholics have followed their own consciences in the face of contrary church teaching.

Rising GOP Stars - Volume 1

Chester A. Arthur, 21st President of the United States and the Father of Modern Civil Service Reform











In late March Daniel Bice, of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, reported on the Walker Administration's appointment of GOP Senator Randy Hopper's young female friend, Valerie Cass, to a communication specialist post in the Department of Regulation and Licensing.

Money Quotes:

She is being paid $20.35 per hour.

If she were to put in a full year in her current job, she would make about $43,200. Her predecessor was paid at a rate of $31,200 a year.

"Ms. Cass' name was among many forwarded to DRL by the Governor's Transition Team as potential candidates for positions with the department," said David Carlson, the agency's spokesman.

But who exactly recommended her for the post?

Cullen Werwie, spokesman for the governor, confirmed that it was Keith Gilkes, Walker's chief of staff. She was then interviewed by the Department of Regulations and Licensing's executive assistant and deputy and hired by Secretary Dave Ross, a Walker cabinet member.

Hard on the heels of Ms. Cass' hire is today's report by Mr. Bice of the hiring of Brian Deschane, the son of prominent Walker supporter, Jerry Deschane, of the Wisconsin Builders association.  Mr. Bice reports:

Just in his mid-20s, Brian Deschane has no college degree, very little management experience and two drunken-driving convictions. Yet he has landed an $81,500-per-year job in Gov. Scott Walker's administration overseeing environmental and regulatory matters and dozens of employees at the Department of Commerce. Even though Walker says the state is broke and public employees are overpaid, Deschane already has earned a promotion and a 26% pay raise in just two months with the state.

How did Deschane score his plum assignment with the Walker team?

It's all in the family.

His father is Jerry Deschane, executive vice president and longtime lobbyist for the Madison-based Wisconsin Builders Association, which bet big on Walker during last year's governor's race.

The group's political action committee gave $29,000 to Walker and his running mate, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, last year, making it one of the top five PAC donors to the governor's successful campaign. Even more impressive, members of the trade group funneled more than $92,000 through its conduit to Walker's campaign over the past two years.
Total donations: $121,652.

Deschane's father said that during the gubernatorial contest he might have reminded Keith Gilkes, Walker's campaign manager and now chief of staff, that his son "was out there and available."

Kapanke Recall Petition Ready For Filing

The LaCrosse Tribune reports that the Kapanke Recall Committee now has 20,000 signatures and will shortly file with the GAB.