Something completely different

A stirring defense of the Gov:

Who is gunning for whom?

The constant shifting as to which GOP candidate each of the others attacks based on current polling, the need to blunt momentum and the demographics of the current state primary puts me in mind of this classic movie scene:



Romney has to try to serve up more red meat in tonight's Florida debate, or he will end up losing his second state in a row. Since passion isn't his forte, he will probably just end up looking silly.

"There are Three Kinds of Lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics" Romney hits the Trifecta

Abrams M1A1 Main Battle Tank






Mitt Romney has made maintenance of a large military a key component of his platform.  He has criticized Barack Obama for planning to cut a "trillion dollars" from the defense budget.  Of course he never bothers to indicate that this represents ten years of cuts, as it would sound far less dramatic to talk in terms of the annual cuts.  In actuality, the trillion dollars in cuts in defense spending is what may result from the sequester provision of the Budget Control Act, which was passed by Congress back in August to resolve the debt ceiling crisis after the Tea Party Republicans threatened to shut down the government and have it default on its obligations.  The President signed the Budget Control Act into law with a gun held squarely to the country's head by the Tea Party caucus.  (I won't relive the events of August here, other than to say terrorists come in all shapes, sizes and political persuasions, only a few of which can be addressed by Predator drones.)  It wasn't the act of signing the BCA into law that poses a potential problem for defense spending, it was the intransigence of the GOP members on the Super-Committee towards accepting some modest level of tax increases as part of a deficit reduction plan.  When the Super-Committee failed in November, through no fault of the President, the sequestration provisions were triggered.  So Romney's claim that President Obama plans to cut a "trillion dollars from defense spending" is a lie.  And he knows it, and he doesn't care that he lies about it to the American people.

But it gets even better in terms of Romney's mendacity.  He also talks about the one trillion in cuts to defense spending posing a severe threat to the power of the United States to project its military power in the world.  But the sequestration provision doesn't require a set amount of cuts to defense spending.  It requires a set amount of cuts to security spending, which includes the U.S. military, homeland security,  intelligence, nuclear weapons, diplomacy, and foreign aid.  Congress in each budget will be free to carve much of the security spending.from the security programs other than defense.  For example, homeland security has an annual  budget of  almost $100 billion dollars, and has been spending about two-thirds of that amount, so much could be cut there.  We don't need enough nuclear weapons to blow up the planet a dozen times over, so if the opposition of the Tennessee (Oak Ridge Lab) and New Mexico (Sandia Lab) congressional delegations could be blunted, much could be cut from nuclear weapons programs.   Moreover, under the sequestration rules, the spending caps are split equally between "security" and "non-security" discretionary spending only for fiscal 2012 and fiscal 2013.  After that, non-security discretionary spending could always be targeted more heavily. And, of course, a more sane way to balance the budget than sequestration could be pursued, similar to the grand approach the president sought to work out with John Boehner a year ago, before the Tea Partiers balked.  For example, Republicans could agree to raise taxes by a small percentage of reductions in spending.

Don't let anyone tell you Obama has been cutting back on the military.  Here is a Cato Institute graph of U.S. military spending over the last 40 years, shown in constant 2011 dollars:

Back in November I posted about the comparative defense spending of the United States and the next 19 highest spending countries in 2009.  Here is the chart of the spending:

Stop the Coronation!

 Will Romney still be smiling Saturday?





Public Policy Polling now has Newt ahead in South Carolina.  It is clear from the numbers that the debate on Monday had a significant effect in lifting Gingrich above Romney.  Romney looked inept, particularly in dealing with a question on his tax returns that should have been anticipated and for which he should have been well practiced . 

Nate Silvers at the New York Times reviews a number of polls and also comes to the conclusion that Newton Leroy is leading in SC.

The poll numbers came in before Perry dropped out today and tossed his support to Gingrich and before Newt's second wife went on ABC to discuss his request of her to be in an "open marriage."   I suppose Newt can try to deflect any new attention on social mores in tonight's debate by promising to "kill" even more of America's enemies. That red meat seems to be popular in South Carolina.  At least more popular than the Sermon on the Mount, which got roundly booed in Monday's debate.  Kudos to Dr. Paul for standing up to the mob attending the debate.  I like the guy more every day.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo also reported today that Newt  leads the "poll of polls" in South Carolina, noting, tongue in cheek:

In truth, Gingrich’s momentum looks so overwhelming the only thing that could stop him would be a last minute tell-all interview from an ex-wife saying he wanted to have an open marriage.

It is an amazing swing in just a few days time.  Strap on your seat belts, folks.  This primary season is about to get interesting.

How Significant is 1,000,000? Not too significant if the Dems don't find a Good Candidate

 Who will it be?



A million is very significant when talking about the Walker Recall petition drive.  1,000,000 voters (assuming that that number holds up on review) represents 46% of all the voters in the last gubernatorial election in Wisconsin.  Back in June I posted about the number of petitioners in Ohio for the Voter Veto Referendum in Ohio that was ultimately successful in rolling back the enacted limits on collective bargaining by the GOP statehouse and governor there:

In the 2010 Ohio gubernatorial election, just a shade under 4,000,000 citizens voted and Governor Kasich squeaked through by about 77,000 votes. So the number of signatures on the petitions to subject Senate Bill 5 to a veto referendum (1,298,301 signatures) represent almost 33% of the 2010 electorate in Ohio

46% is much bigger than 33%.  But securing a million signatures will be a wasted effort unless a viable candidate is put up to run against Governor Walker.  You don't have to like Scott Walker to acknowledge that he is a very capable and smooth candidate.

The last thing we need is for the candidate opposing him to look hand-selected by organized labor, and that is seemingly what the unions in Wisconsin are working to do with Kathleen Falk.  While I like Kathleen (I went to law school with her), she has twice failed in state-wide elections, and is too easily painted with the Madison Liberali brush.  David Obey is, like Tommy Thompson, too long in the teeth now.  Tom Barrett proved to be an inadequate retail politician and debater last Fall, and it will seem too much like a "do-over" if he runs. Right now, Tim Cullen seems like the best of the bunch.

But if I could be God for a day in setting up this election, I would direct (remember, I'm God for the day) Mark Bugher, former Secretary of both the Department of Revenue and the Department of Administration under Tommy Thompson to switch political parties and run as a Democrat.  Bugher is clearly a bi-partisan type of adminstrator. He is scary smart, very affable, politically savvy, with loyal friends in all parts of the state. He is committed to the development of Wisconsin as a powerhouse in the technology and bio-technology markets in his current jobs as director of the University Research Park and as a special assistant to Chancellor David Ward on UW policy.  He understands how important the success of the University system is to the entire state's economy.  That is something that Governor Walker and the Brothers Fitzgerald either don't recognize or, worse, don't care about.  While Mark Bugher has always been a Republican, today's Wisconsin Republican party, grounded on Tea Party inanity, might be starting to seem somewhat alien to him.

Governor Walker's Latest Faceplant - December 2011 Job Numbers

 Faceplant





The December 2011 job numbers were released by the state's Department of Workforce Development today at noon, and Wisconsin continued to shed jobs in December.   In the private job sector (non-farm), the job market in which the Governor promised 250,000 new jobs by January 2015, employment fell by 3,900 jobs from the final revised figures for November 2011.  This was the sixth straight month of private sector job losses by the state. After adding 41,200 jobs in the first six months of 2011, Wisconsin job creation fell off the edge of the table, with the state losing almost 28,000 jobs since June.

In the last twelve months, Wisconsin has added just  13,500 private sector jobs.  At that rate, the Governor is on pace to add 54,000 new jobs in his first term, rather than 250,000.  

Last month, DWD Secretary Newson attacked the accuracy of the Department of Labor's monthly preliminary job numbers in an effort to suggest that the job creation picture was being unduly skewed downward by the methodology applied by the Feds.  However in today's job report, Secretary Newson attempted to document this problem in a way that actually demonstrates that it is a non-issue.  Here is the table from today's report:

In only two months have the revisions been over 2,000 jobs in the private sector, once revised upward and once revised downward.  But, as Secretary Newson's criticism implicitly says, the final job numbers are what should be the principal focus, and just using the eleven months of final numbers from January to November 2011, the state has added only 17,400, or an average of 1600 jobs a month.  Extrapolated over 48 months, that is a total job creation number of just 76,000, well less than a third of the number promised in the Walker campaign.

It can be argued that this is obviously a limited slice of the 48 month pie, and that the Governor may well have put in place some policies that will see an acceleration in job creation over the next 36 months, but keep in mind that during the same six month period (July to December 2011) that Wisconsin has lost 28,000 private sector jobs, the United States as a whole has added just short of a million new jobs. Being Secretary of Wisconsin DWD can't be a very happy job right now.

1,000,000 people standing Shoulder-to-Shoulder

The average adult has a shoulder width of 19 inches.  One million people standing shoulder-to-shoulder would make a line stretching for over 300 miles.  Here is a 300 mile path stretching along what could eventually have been a high-speed passenger rail line between Chicago and St. Paul, with a stop in Madison, had the Governor not pandered to the Tea Party and rejected the Federal grant to help develop the line.

If you want to go to Minneapolis from Madison and back for business or just a weekend of fun, you have a few options, including:   (a) Drive for 10 hours, costing  $100 and park for $20-30 per day.  (b) Ride Megabus for $57.00 round-trip and spend 11 hours in double-decker bus. (c) Book a flight through Expedia for $458 and to get the lowest possible fare route your trip from Madison to Philadelphia and on to Minneapolis, over an entire day of travel.  High speed rail would have conveyed you to Minneapolis in three hours in the beginning, and in an hour and a half eventually.

To go from Eau Claire to Milwaukee and back by plane, you have to fly to Chicago first, with round trip fares starting at $302, and travel time of four hours.

 Madison to Chicago and back by plane?  Plan to shell out $480 for a non-stop flight.  If you want a cheaper fare, you can go via Denver or Detroit and Louisville.

The Acela Line between Boston and Washington operates at a profit even though its 150 mile per hour trains only average about 75 to 80 MPH.

I have previously posted about the huge cost to the state of Wisconsin taxpayers of now paying $210,000,000 for upgrading the Hiawatha passenger rail line because the Governor rejected the federal stimulus grant of $810,000,000 for high speed rail service from Milwaukee to Madison that included much of the money required for the Hiawatha upgrade. It isn't like the Governor saved the public fisc the $810,000,000.  All that money that could have helped create a more vibrant economic corridor between Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago, and eventually on to the Twin Cities, went to California, Illinois, Michigan and numerous other states.  So, it just served to make us even more of a federal tax dollar donor state.

Wouldn't it be nice if Governor Walker would provide the public with the written economic analysis on which he based his rejection of the $810,000,000 in federal funds for rail initiatives back in December 2010?  Hopefully the state media will ask for this analysis in the forthcoming recall campaign.

What A Million Looks Like

Camp Randall, Madison, Wisconsin, Official Capacity:  80,321   x    12.45 =   1,000,000


Retail Politicking at its finest.