The Ball State University Center for Business Research has released Conexus11, a comparison of the states in business climate generally and manufacturing and logistics business climate specifically.
The study grades the states on manufacturing, logistics, human capital, employee benefit costs, global reach (that is, the amount of international trade), productivity and innovation among state-based businesses, tax climate, diversification of state businesses, and venture capital per capita — “variables chosen to represent those state level items most likely to be considered by site selection experts for manufacturing and logistics firms, and by the prevailing economic research on growth.”
With that in mind, Wisconsin parents, here is Wisconsin’s report card:
Manufacturing: B+ Logistics: B– Human capital: B+ Employee benefit costs: D– Global reach: C Productivity and innovation: D– Tax climate: C– Diversification: B– Venture capital: C
Add those up by the usual point system, and Wisconsin’s grade point average is 2.11, a C. Any parents out there satisfied with C grades?
These are essentially the same grades the state received in the 2010 comparison. (There was a blog that covered that somewhere …) It’s good that Wisconsin did relatively well in one of the biggest employment sectors of the state. Logistics is not only a major employer (Schneider National and its orange trucks), but logistics is part of every business that sells products or performs on-site services.
The rest of the areas are of a more general business-climate nature. The tax-climate grade is about two grade levels too high. (I’m guessing relatively few manufacturers are organized as S corporations or other pass-through entities, and to have business-friendly tax reform requires reforming not just corporate income taxes, but personal income taxes as well.) The Global Reach grade is an indictment of the state Department of Commerce, which sent news releases regularly extolling the state as an exporter, when apparently they were inflating the export impact of a state that should be close to leading the nation in exporting, between manufacturing and agriculture. One wonders how much the employee benefits cost score is tied to state mandates in health insurance.
Not all of them are tied to what government does. The diversification grade touches on a tricky subject, the balance between sticking to your business knitting (core competencies and all that) and branching out into areas that might prove more lucrative. If this reads like damned-if-y0u-do/damned-if-you-don’t, well, it is:
States which have a high proportion of manufacturing activity in a single sector typically suffer higher volatility in employment and incomes over a business cycle. Less diversified regions are also more likely to experience greater effects of structural changes to the economy which involve a single sector. … One potential benefit of low levels of economic diversification is that specialization and the resulting agglomeration economies often emerge in these highly specialized regions.
It is interesting to see Wisconsin get high marks in human capital, but low marks in productivity and innovation. The study notes the latter grade is based on “manufacturing productivity growth, industry research and development expenditures on a per capita basis, the per capita number of patents issued annually and the expenditures by venture capital firms in each state adjusted to a per capita basis.” That includes, but is not limited to, “the presence of local talent in these areas through access to university laboratories and non-profit research activities,” which in this state starts with UW–Madison.
Venture capital shows up in the aforementioned productivity and innovation grade and in a separate grade. This state is far worse than the national average in terms of venture capital investment. (In part because, as I argued yesterday, Wisconsin doesn’t have enough rich people.) And yet the initial attempt to promote venture capital (deservedly) went nowhere. That doesn’t mean the problem has disappeared; it means a better solution is needed than what was initially proposed.
As I bring up every time business climate studies are discussed here, those of a certain political bent criticize studies that give results with which they ideologically disagree. (This means you, Bob Jauch!) But business climate studies are by definition based on what businesses consider important, not on what Da Union wants. It is no accident that Wisconsin has trailed the national average in per capita personal income growth since the days disco was popular. It is also no accident that Wisconsin has trailed as well in business start-ups, incorporations, venture capital investment and other measures of business vitality. (It is also not an accident that Wisconsin unemployment rates and labor force participation numbers are better than the national average — Wisconsinites work because they have to in order to pay for everything government wants from us.)
Wisconsin has been officially open for business for less than six months. So irrespective of Gov. Scott Walker’s quarter-million-new-jobs pledge, the effects of legislative initiatives to improve the state’s business climate won’t be known for some time. Those efforts to date haven’t gone nearly far enough to undo the effects of the previous approach.
According to Twitter, Wisconsin Public Radio’s Joy Cardin show (that is, substitute host Glenn Moberg) will ask its guests next hour … well, let’s let Twitter describe it:
Wed at 7am, @JoyCardinShow asks his guests: “Should taxes be increased on the wealthiest Americans?” Take the poll at http://t.co/mSsPGW8
If you care about the results of a totally unscientific poll asked of a majority-liberal audience, then go to the link and answer yourself. I would predict the answer will be Yes by an overwhelming margin. All those who answer Yes will be wrong, of course, but the right to free expression includes the right to be wrong.
The question is being asked in the light of a Washington Post story with this headline that serves as news and opinion: “With executive pay, rich pull away from rest of America.” The Post could have substituted a few words and made for a more interesting story, but that would not do for the newspaper of record of the District of Columbia: “With federal power grabs, federal government pulls away from rest of America.”
This is, first, a math issue. If person A makes $200,000 and person B makes $20,000, and each person’s income grows 5 percent in a year, then A will have $210,000 and B will have $21,000. The gap between A and B thus grew 5 percent.
But, as I wrote the first time this came up in the 1990s, the question is not whether person A is doing better. Rich people have ways to grow their income that are not accessible to the middle class or even the upper middle class. What person B wants to know is if B is doing better.
I would argue, in fact, that one reason why the state’s economy has underperformed the nation’s for more than three decades is that we don’t have enough rich people in this state. People who know something about state businesses can probably tell you who the really rich people in this state are. According to the annual Forbes 400, the richest Wisconsinite as of September was John Menard of Save-Big-Money-at-Menards fame, followed by Herb Kohler of Kohler Co., Don Schneider of Schneider National, Diane Hendricks of ABC Supply, four members of the S.C. Johnson family, and James Cargill of (the evil, according to Ed Garvey in 1988) Cargill Inc. Menard ranked 51st, and of the nation’s 400 richest Americans, just nine of them are Wisconsinites.
Everyone on that list got their money from businesses, or being in a business-associated family. With the possible exception of the Johnsons (and I write that only because I don’t know for certain), every person on that list got their wealth from their own hard work in establishing profitable businesses that employ people, serve customers and contribute to their communities.
Which, of course, means nothing to the “Tax! Tax! Tax the Rich!” crowds that befouled the state Capitol and Square earlier this year (to the tune of more than $8 million in damages and police overtime) protesting that most novel of Wisconsin things, a somewhat financially responsible state budget. Gov. James Doyle signed into law a $2.1 billion tax increase in 2009, giving the state the “honor” of having the fourth highest state and local taxes in the U.S., to fix the state’s bad finances. But the tax increase (which wasn’t high enough anyway according to the misguided) didn’t fix state finances; instead, Gov. Scott Walker got handed a $136.7 million deficit as a Welcome to the Executive Residence present, on top of a structural deficit heading into the next budget cycle of up to $3.6 billion. The state’s GAAP deficit at the end of this fiscal year will likely be close to the 2009–10 GAAP deficit of $2.94 billion.
The Institute for Wisconsin’s Failure claimed that a mere 1.5 percent increase in taxes on the top 1 percent of state income-earners would have raised $125 million to allow the state to waste more money. (That fictional $125 million, by the way, represents 4.3 percent of the GAAP deficit. That’s all.) Tax increases on the “rich” don’t work because the “rich” have enough money to hire tax experts to create perfectly legal tax avoidance strategies for their money, up to and including changing the “rich” taxpayer’s state of residence. Moreover, the purpose of government is to perform the functions of government, not to employ people (beyond who is needed to perform the functions of government), not to redistribute income, and not to effect trendy social change. (The protesters don’t grasp that, and often those in the big domed building around which they were protesting don’t grasp that either.)
I suspect the real reason for “Tax the Rich!” is the belief of the chanters that tax increases wouldn’t apply to them. Sales tax increases, of course, apply to everyone, as do property tax increases within a particular municipality/school district/county combination. Business tax increases are passed on to business’ customers. And as with every tax, every dollar paid in tax is $1 that will not go anywhere else — not to buying consumer goods, not into savings, not into a new house, and not into, say, starting a new business or getting involved with venture capital or angel investing.
To advocate tax increases that would not apply to you is dishonest and hypocritical. (For the religious, it’s also a violation of two commandments: “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not covet.”) Some said during the budget and budget-repair deliberations that they would be willing to pay more in taxes (while never saying how much more, of course), and since the Feds will take your extra money toward the $14 trillion federal debt, I suspect the state Department of Revenue will take your money as well if you want to send extra money to be wasted in Madison. But to advocate raising taxes that won’t affect you (unless your suggestion is intended as satire) means you’re advocating taking money that doesn’t belong to you. Outside of politics, that’s called theft.
As you know, I am a fan of adult beverages. (I’m drinking brandy as I write this.)
Also as you know, I am not a fan of the totally unnecessary state budget goodie that is supposed to help MillerCoors at the expense of Anheuser–Busch, but will instead hurt craft brewers.
I am happy to read that (according to the Wisconsin State Journal’s Beer Baron, several Republicans, including Sens. Glenn Grothman (R–West Bend) and Pam Galloway (R–Wausau) and Rep. Steve Nass (R–Whitewater) have contacted Gov. Scott Walker and asked him to veto the provision of the state budget that bans breweries from owning beer distributorships. I am not happy to see that Sen. Luther Olsen (R–Ripon) voted for the provision on the Joint Finance Committee, although Olsen had company.
A Capital Times story about the budget provision quotes Marc Buttera of O’So Brewery in Plover, who would be banned from selling his own beer at his on-site store. That is ridiculous and a good reason by itself for a gubernatorial veto.
In addition to the other reasons to oppose this — namely that it is wrong for government to take sides to promote one business at the expense of its competition, no matter which party’s idea it is — this item, which has zero fiscal impact on state government, does not belong in the state budget. I’ve written repeatedly over the years that policy matters that do not have state fiscal impact should be debated as separate bills, not thrown into the state budget. If it’s wrong for Democrats to do it, it’s wrong for Republicans to do it too.
Walker’s office can be contacted at 608-266-1212 or govgeneral@wisconsin.gov. My suggestion would be to keep your comments about the beer provision, and not throw in other budget thoughts (this means you, Da Union).
Two weeks ago, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote two interesting, yet contradictory in a sense, pieces about what’s happened in Madison since Gov. Scott Walker took office.
The first story looks at the national impact of Walker’s effort to defang public employee unions’ ability to extort taxpayer dollars — I mean, curtail public employee unions’ collective bargaining rights. (Which the Supreme Court did Tuesday.) The Journal Sentinel’s reporting is potentially worthy of Pulitzer Prize consideration, and I predict someone some day will write a book about this, which will have copies in every public library in the state and approximately 112 readers nationwide:
Within days, Madison became the epicenter of protest, with demonstrators flooding the Capitol and filling the Square, thrusting a statewide story onto the national stage. …
But some recalcitrant GOP senators, including [Senate President Michael] Ellis, would soon find themselves pressured from the right by TV ads financed by the state arm of Club for Growth, a national conservative group that joined efforts to push Walker’s bill. …
Protest crowds built dramatically, as did national attention and the media interest. …
“We had a revolution to plan,” said Rich Abelson, head of AFSCME District Council 48, the Milwaukee-based public employee union. His union and others had long sparred with Walker. Emails showed that on the day of the Democrats’ departure, national union officials were offering talking points to Democrats to explain their absence. …
Labor leaders, state and national, as well as Democratic Party officials, stayed in close touch with the senators even as they worked to keep the protests going — and growing.
Ellis’ role is interesting:
In early February, Walker met with Senate President Mike Ellis, an independent and cantankerous Republican, fiscal hawk and son of a paper mill worker-union leader from Neenah.
Ellis wasn’t shy. He implored Walker to drop the collective-bargaining piece of the bill before it went public and undermined Walker’s early legislative successes.
At that point, according to Ellis, the plan on the table would have ended all collective bargaining except for firefighters, police and troopers — a broader plan than Walker ultimately introduced.
“My God, this is going to cause a firestorm,” Ellis told Walker. …
Ellis caught wind of what was happening when he spoke with Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R–Juneau), who already had been talking with the administration.
“Fitzgerald came in to tell me and said, ‘You better sit down, you’re not going to believe what I’m going to tell you,’” Ellis said.
“‘He’s going to do away with all unions,’” Ellis quoted Fitzgerald saying.
Ellis’ prediction was surely correct, even if obvious. Fitzgerald’s was not, because the government cannot “do away with all unions,” whether Fitzgerald was referring to “all unions” or public-employee unions. (Unfortunately in the latter case.) Whether a private company’s employees choose to unionize is up to that company and its employees and no one else. That company’s customers do have the right to vote with their business over whether they support union businesses or not. There is no such choice for taxpayers with governments and their unionized employees, which is why taxpayers should have the final say in collective bargaining rights, or the lack thereof, of the employees whose salaries they pay with their taxes.
The other story takes a curiously nativist tone over the source of Walker’s reform proposals:
Did Walker develop the idea himself, after years of clashing with organized labor as Milwaukee County executive? Or did he get help from conservative think tanks or advocacy groups?
Union leaders, Democrats and liberals see a conspiracy in which right-wing groups saw an opening and pushed the changes here and elsewhere across the country.
Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R–Juneau) said [in late May] that it was Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels who may have provided the template for Walker’s proposal. On his second day in office in 2005, Daniels rescinded collective bargaining for state workers. …
In Wisconsin, bill drafters at the Legislative Reference Bureau said the detailed instructions on the final version of the bill came from Walker’s Department of Administration. A chain of emails backs that up. There is no indication in the extensive file of any influence or input from outside groups. …
Many union leaders point to David and Charles Koch, billionaire brothers well known for their support of conservative causes. Koch Industries, which has extensive operations in Wisconsin, contributed to Walker’s campaign through its political action committee.Others cite the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. The conservative group drafts model legislation on myriad issues and offers it to members for use in state legislatures around the country. The group has received financial support from Koch Industries.
That would be Koch Industries, the employer of more than 2,500 Wisconsinites, by the way. In other states, private-sector empl0yment is a good thing — preferable to government employment, in fact, given that the economic impact of government jobs is blunted by the cost of those government jobs. In Wisconsin, not so much, according to the protesters in Madison.
Another ingredient in the conspiracy theory recipe is the American Legislative Exchange Council:
ALEC spokeswoman Raegan Weber said the group does not have anti-collective bargaining legislation among its portfolio of legislation.
“ALEC has model legislation that simply states that employees have a choice to join, or refrain from joining, a union,” she said, adding neither Walker nor any lawmakers consulted with the group on the measure here.
However, in a January interview with The New York Times – before Walker’s proposal was unveiled – Michael Hough, director of ALEC’s commerce task force, said the group was spreading collective-bargaining proposals from state to state.
Wisconsin political geeks like to see Wisconsin as a political leader among the states. Inevitably this so-called leadership is either nonideological (direct election of U.S. senators and primary elections) or “progressive,” including income taxes and aforementioned public-employee collective bargaining rights. (The latter was signed into law by Gov. Gaylord Nelson, who as a U.S. senator founded Earth Day on the same day as Vladimir Lenin’s birthday.) Wisconsin’s Progressive movement was started as a response to stick it to evil railroad executives, and state politics has pretty much followed the screw-the-productive-class little red book for more than 100 years. One result is that this state has some of the worst finances of any state in the U.S.
Good ideas and bad ideas observe no borders. Other states’ government and politics have followed the novel concept that the function of government is to perform government services, not to employ people, redistribute wealth, or effect and promote trendy social change. The state Constitution includes the advice that “The blessings of a free government can only be maintained by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles” — advice that was ignored within 50 years of its writing.
Most states have some sort of spending or taxation limits. Neither the writers of the Wisconsin Constitution nor any Legislature since statehood saw fit to enact such taxpayer-protection measures. As a result, despite $2 billion in tax increases and the fourth highest state and local taxes in the U.S., Wisconsin is near the top of the states in GAAP deficits, consecutive fiscal years of GAAP deficits, and state and local government debt, in addition to being in the bottom half of states in bond ratings.
The time to return those aforementioned fundamental principles, which are not exclusive to Wisconsin, is now. The previous Legislature’s and governor’s ignorance of “frugality and virtue” led us to enough red ink to drown the entire state. For the most part (though not entirely), the current Legislature and governor are working to drain the red-ink swamp and prevent the next red-ink flood.
It is said that you should write about what you know. So I shouldn’t be writing about being a father, because after being an official father for more than 11 years, I still don’t know what I’m doing. (I didn’t write a Mother’s Day column because I know even less about being a mother.)
Particularly now, of course. My father worked for 40½ years at the same bank, though with three different names and at at least three different locations. My sixth different job ended March 30, so since then our three children have had a stay-at-home dad. (I should teach them to tell people that I am a journalist. The definition at the UW School of Journalism of a “journalist” was “an out-of-work reporter.”)
On the other hand, this nearly-three-month employment pause hasn’t been all bad. I have been able to go on field trips with all of my kids this spring — to a cave with Dylan, bowling with Shaena, and the state Capitol with Michael. Last weekend, I went to church camp with Shaena, and I can truthfully say I have spent worse three days. (I wasn’t the only unemployed father there, although we were the only father–daughter duo.)
I know three things for sure: (1) once you’re a parent, you are never not a parent, at least until the parent–child relationship ends in death (and if the parent is the dead one, probably not even then); (2) there is no substitute for being there, whatever “there” entails; and (3) the most important thing a father can do is to be an example of how to act as an adult.
Understand that I’m not giving advice in that previous paragraph. There are some things where you have to learn by doing, and being a father is certainly one of them. There is no how-to-be-a-father book that any soon-to-be-father will grasp.
1. Basic biology: A man produces hundreds of millions of sperm every day. Each of these sperm contains (half of) the genetic blueprint for a different person. The slightest physical movement changes the position of sperm.
2. Therefore, any change in my life prior to my children’s conception would have led my children not to exist. If I had crossed my legs differently, or walked to the frig, or even chuckled an extra time, the sperm would have been rearranged, negating my children’s existence. I might have had different children, of course, but they wouldn’t be the ones I have.
3. Like most parents, I have a massive endowment effect vis-a-vis my children. I love them greatly simply because they exist and they’re mine. If you offered to replace one of my sons with another biological child who was better in every objective way, I’d definitely refuse.
4. Therefore, if you offered me a “do-over” on any aspect of my life prior to my children’s conception, I would refuse, for it would mean that these specific children would never have been born.
5. Since I wouldn’t want to change any event prior to my children’s conception, I have nothing to regret. And since I have nothing to regret during this period, I don’t regret anything. …
If you think this is just my egghead way of saying “Happy Father’s Day!,” you’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg. What I’m really saying is that if you love your children just because they’re the ones you got, you have a special reason to be happy every day. After all, you can survey your whole life before your last child’s conception and honestly say: “It all happened for a reason. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
I read such things, realize that the opposite political side from mine believes there are too many people on this planet, conclude that more children means you have the opportunity to outnumber your enemies, and conclude that we should have more kids. And then I have days where I think that three children was three too many.
I wrote a great tribute (or at least readers said it was) to my parents on their 50th wedding anniversary Jan. 7. Unfortunately my former employer chose to kill the blog on which it was posted, so those who read that blog might get some repetitive material here.
My parents didn’t have nearly the normal-to-the-point-of-dull childhoods my brother and I had. (I’ve chosen to not delve into details, in part because it seems that my grandparents were perhaps better grandparents than parents.) At their 50th wedding dinner at Christiano’s in Wautoma, my parents told me the sequence of their meeting:
Mom was a contestant at the Miss Wisconsin-USA pageant. Dad apparently did some piano work for or with her tied to the pageant.
Then they ran into each other at the Badger Candy Kitchen on the Square in Madison. Dad had been to the dentist, so he drooled chicken noodle soup. Nevertheless, they had a dinner date …
… which consisted of fish sticks and French fries, because that was all Dad could afford, and probably because it was on a no-meat Friday in the pre-Vatican II days.
The period between before their wedding and when I arrived on the scene was about a 400 on the scale of stressful life events. Dad, who was a member of southern Wisconsin’s first rock and roll band, was seriously injured in a fatal crash on the way to a show. Two years after they married, Dad’s mother died of a stroke at 49. And then, not long after their third wedding anniversary and less than a year after Dad had graduated from UW–Madison and got his first real job, their first son died a month before his second birthday. Such events in marriages today, particularly the last one (and, non-parents, you cannot know what that would be like), are grounds for divorce today.
The older I get, the more I recognize common traits in both my father and myself, irrespective of our common body types (though I am taller and heavier and far more nearsighted). I’m sure you’ll be shocked — shocked! — to know that we’re both rather right-wing, although I think I am more libertarian than he is and, thanks to my years in the news media, can articulate arguments better. (To complain, for instance, that UW football coach Bret Bielema is not a great coach requires actual evidence thereof.) He and I also have enjoyed dealing with bad backs, although in my case it’s amazing how better my back gets when I’m less of a fat blob.
I also think that, even though he was in one of the most establishment lines of work there is, we share the same slyly subversive attitude toward authority. I have said for years that if I had done one-tenth of what he did when I was in my teenage years, well, I’d still be grounded today. He survived several different bosses, including out-of-town and out-of-state bosses, each of whom, I’m sure, thought they knew Dad’s job better than Dad did.
Many readers may have had difficult relationships with their own fathers. I’m happy to say that has truly never been the case with either of my parents. Which is pretty remarkable given how argumentative their oldest son was as a teenager. (As if that’s changed, my family says.) I compare myself to him and generally measure up in almost nothing — in ability to keep a job, patience (though he wouldn’t be considered patient, I’m on a whole ‘nother level of impatience — put it this way: I understand this sentiment perfectly), mechanical or around-the-house ability, athletic ability (he was a state champion relay-runner; I played trumpet in the band of a high school state basketball champion) and other areas.
When I got to college age, Dad bought a collectible car — a 1962 Chevrolet Impala convertible — and we went to car shows with it. Those car shows also awakened my interest in, well, music older than I am, including what I’ve heard of the band in which Dad played piano:
Note the poor posture of the piano player.
(This band resulted in two brushes with greatness. The first was when the band played as the backup band for Bobby Darin in a Madison concert. Dad says Darin was a perfectionist and thus not the greatest musical experience. The second was when he was working part-time for a Madison music store when he was called to set up an organ at the new Dane County Coliseum, which was hosting Ray Charles in its first concert. The organ player invited Dad to watch the concert backstage. The organ player did not tell him, however, that at some point Charles was going to thank the organ-installer, and hey, why don’t you come out and play a song with us, Steve? Sadly, Dad remembers none of his unscheduled Walter Mitty experience.)
We’ve taken a couple of trips together. The first and most Israelites-bugging-out-of-Egypt-like was when he and I, several Boy Scouts and our Scoutmaster went to the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. (Dad commented that he hasn’t been that weight since, and I had to point out that I haven’t been that weight since about one month out of college.) It was an epic trip, starting with the first day, when our arrival in Manhattan, Kan., coincided with what appeared to be the arrival of Armageddon. (Put it this way: It isn’t supposed to get dark at 6 p.m. on Independence Day.) Anyway, we survived not just the first night (instead of going to a what-would-have-been-flooded campground, we slept in the basement of a Manhattan Scoutmaster who just happened to be at the same Pizza Hut we were at), but the entire trip with no one dying or killing each other.
I’ve also been on two baseball trips — the first with Dad and a childhood friend of his, the second with my parents, where said childhood friend joined us. The first was Madison-t0-St. Louis-to-Cincinnati-to-Chicago-to-Milwaukee; the second was supposed to be two spring-training games in Arizona, but turned out to be just one because the first was rained out. Dad was upset about the first, but I thought sitting at a sports bar with the two of them was quite enjoyable.
One of my favorite afternoons when I was in my last term at Marketplace was when he and I interviewed two Portage County microbrewery owners. I specifically invited him because I wanted him to see what I do. He ended up doing at least as much talking as I did, but that was fine; I just sat back and wrote down the answers from the microbrewers.
My parents served as examples. Not once did I ever witness my father ever say anything derogatory about my mother to someone else, or vice versa. Dad taught classes on Wednesday nights to young bankers, which showed me that if you need to augment your full-time income, you figure out how to. I suspect he made more than one career sacrifice in favor of his family, but he never complained about it. My parents aren’t what I’d consider overly demonstrative toward each other, but that, I guess, allowed us to take the fact that they loved each other for granted. And how do you learn about how to be a husband? From your own parents.
Those reading this from Facebook will note that my profile picture is Dad’s photo for Father’s Day weekend. I’m taller than he is, and I’m a lot taller than my mother, but I still look up to both of them.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 