The number one song today in 1965:
Three years later, the singer of the number one song in Britain announced …
Today in 1976, Chicago released what would become its first number one single, to the regret of all true brass rock fans:
Cindy Kilkenny notices the reporting of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Dan Bice:
I suspect the reason Daniel Bice from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is fanning the flames of Burke’s wealth again is that desire to sell papers, I.e., feign relevance in a seriously slow election. Incredibly slow. One certainly wouldn’t guess there’s a gubernatorial election in Wisconsin in less than three months.
In the last couple of weeks Bice has taken to task both the combined wealth of Mary Burke’s family and Ron Johnson’s comments on the Walker campaign using her wealth as a talking point.
Bice writes:
Records show Burke, her mother and three siblings living in Wisconsin paid a total of $1.77 million in personal income taxes in 2012. That would mean the five Burke family members reported a total adjusted gross income of at least $22.8 million during that year.
Once again, no wonder we have such trouble enticing good candidates to run in Wisconsin. Burke’s wealth a target; now her mother and siblings get a thorough examination, too.
However, Bice does provide credence to the argument that not only is Burke rich, but that wealth isn’t exactly new money. Nor is she self made. Though Democrats in the state are pushing back that Burke wasn’t born with a silver spoon – her father started the company when she was a teenager – it’s rather difficult to argue that daddy’s money didn’t pay for her snowing sabbatical when he guaranteed every child a job with Trek.
What makes this issue even more interesting is Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson popping up to defend Burke.
“Far too often in the political realm, we demonize success, we demagogue against it,” Johnson added. “What we should be doing is incentivizing success.”
Ya think? No seriously, Johnson is playing this just right, after all he is by implication defending his own right to be rich. If he happens to score a quick political Bazinga! in Governor Scott Walker’s direction, well, those are called bonus points.
Kilkenny’s tweet makes a point few seem to catch:
@Burke4WI ‘s filthy-rich tag by opponents is only useful because @WisDems have demonized wealth.
Kilkenny makes a point Wisconsin Republicans should pick up on:
That’s not news, of course. But it’s where the core of Walker’s campaign should focus. Democrats in Wisconsin have brutalized the wealthy here. That did not stop them from proffering what is likely the wealthiest gubernatorial candidate the state has ever met.
That is the hypocrisy the campaign should take to the voting polls. Not Burke, per se, but the WisDem policy of saying one thing to garner votes, but doing another when it comes to political survival.
Kilkenny’s contention is interesting because there are probably more really wealthy Democrats in the U.S. — to name three, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and George Soros, and before them Franklin Roosevelt and all the Kennedys — than really wealthy Republicans. But to Democrats, wealth is OK if you support the correct political things, and if you don’t, you are the scum of the earth. (That’s why Democrats think Burke is OK and Johnson is not.) There are very, very, very few Wisconsinites that have enough family money to go off on a year-long sabbatical to find themselves, or whatever Burke was able to do with her family’s money.
I maintain, as you know, that the state GOP is wrongheaded with its attacks on Trek Bicycle, a company Republicans would be lauding from Superior to Kenosha were it not for Mary Burke’s political views. The GOP should be pointing out that the policies Mary Burke espouses would be, in fact, bad for Wisconsin businesses, because they would increase costs (by opposing tax cuts and espousing minimum-wage increases) without making Wisconsin businesses more profitable.
The Washington Examiner passes on the Economist‘s chart based on the American Political Science Review measurement of the most liberal and most conservative cities of more than 250,000 population:
Madison is not on this list because of the 250,000-population cutoff, which Madison hasn’t reached yet. When it does, well, look at the left side of your monitor or screen, and keep going left until your field of vision disappears, and that is where the People’s Republic of Madison will be.
Why are there so few conservative cities? Probably because of what this chart shows:
This is why you see maps like this …
… of the 2012 presidential election results based upon which candidate won a county. One wonders how we might divide the U.S. by ejecting the most blue counties on this map.
Actually, someone does wonder that, but in reverse, reports RedState:
The nation would be better off if Southern states seceded from the union, and Republicans pushing for right-to-work, voter ID laws and other reforms are “neo-Confederates” according to a candid exchange between a major Democratic donor and liberal organizers on Gamechanger Salon. The forum, a secretive and exclusive digital gathering of over 1,000 leftwing leaders, activists and journalists, was recently made public by Media Trackers, and email exchanges between members offer fascinating insights into the group’s inner deliberations.
Gamechanger Salon participant Jon Stahl sparked a conversation last October about the role of the South in American politics when he posted a link to Michael Lind’s piece for Salon magazine entitled The South is Holding America Hostage. “I thought this was an impressive (if tough) piece of big-picture political strategy and prescription,” Stahl explained before remarking, “Would be interested to hear others’ opinions of whether he is on target or way off…and if so what that might imply.
First to respond was Guy Saperstein, a wealthy California mega-donor to Democratic candidates and leftwing causes. “In the alternative, could we just let the South secede?” the part owner of the Oakland Athletics baseball team queried.
He was serious.
The number one song in Britain today in 1964 was brought back to popularity almost two decades later by the movie “Stripes”:
That same day, the Kinks hit the British charts for the first time with …
This was, of course, the number one song in the U.S. today in 1966:
That same day, KLUE in Longview, Texas, organizes the first “Beatles Bonfire,” where Beatles fans offended by John Lennon’s recent “bigger than Jesus” comment could throw their records to be burned.
The next day, KLUE’s tower was struck by lightning.
Additional respect for free speech came from Rev. Thurman H. Babbs of New Haven Baptist Church in Cleveland, who suggested that Beatles fans be excommunicated.
Having gotten a big paycheck funded by us taxpayers for the past four years, state treasurer Kurt Schuller believes you need him, or at least his office, after all:
Four years ago, I never thought I would say these words.
I no longer believe the state treasurer’s office should be eliminated. I have changed my mind. …
To continue to attempt eliminating this office defines “insanity,” which is trying the same thing over and over again but expecting a different outcome. It also wastes state time and money.
So let’s stop talking about eliminating the treasurer’s office and start talking about restoring it. It is time to map out a plan that returns programs to the treasurer’s office — programs that are failing dismally after being hastily moved elsewhere. …
My staff and I have gone about the business that the people elected a treasurer to do. That included returning nearly $90 million in unclaimed property rightfully belonging to the people. We returned record amounts in 2011 and 2012, in large part because of our brilliant and dedicated marketing and claims staff.
We were on pace to surpass our own record of $36 million the previous year, and to hit $40 million in 2013. Then the unclaimed property program was moved to the state Department of Revenue.
To my dismay, recent news reports show the unclaimed property program now is failing not being properly managed. DOR blames us for handing them a defective program. But that just doesn’t add up if you track the performance of the program while under the watchful guardianship of our office the past four decades.
Just six months after I took office, the Local Government Investment Pool and the state’s college savings program called EdVest also were transferred out of the treasurer’s office. It created a disruption to Wisconsin taxpayers, sounded alarm bells with our county and municipal treasurers, and occurred for no good reason.
I once envisioned a reasonable process for eliminating the treasurer’s office in which all the requirements to amend the constitution took place. Then, and only then, would it make any sense to disperse the office’s duties in an orderly and thoughtful way.
I now realize the most suitable place for these programs and many others is under the watchful eye of an elected official, rather than an appointed bureaucrat. We need a person the people choose to guard their money, their children’s college investments, their local government investments, their state investment pool and statewide banking contract.
The failings Schuller points out demonstrate why government is always inferior to the private sector. Employees who don’t do their jobs get fired in the real world. Employees who don’t do their jobs in government keep doing their jobs, and we’re all paying their salaries.
There is a better solution than keeping Schuller’s office or, worse, the office of secretary of state, which has allowed Douglas La Follette to suck up taxpayer dollars when apparently he has been incapable of private-sector work his entire adult life. The solution is to eliminate the state treasurer and secretary of state positions, and whatever staff and duties need to remain should be shifted into the lieutenant governor’s office. It is unclear to me why the state should waste $5.5 million every year to run those two offices for minimal work.
The Daily Caller reports:
“Cash for Clunkers,” the 2009 Obama administration stimulus program designed to spend $2.85 billion to jumpstart the auto industry, turned out to be a complete disaster — for the auto industry.
In the minds of Obama’s team of advisers and economists, the program made total sense, of course. The plan was to dangle a $4,500 credit to persuade car owners to trade in their older automobiles for new cars with better fuel efficiency. It would stimulate an economy then in the midst of a deep recession. As a bonus, it would mean less oil consumption and cleaner-running cars.
The law of unintended consequences is a brutal thing, though, especially for inexperienced, shortsighted policymakers.
According to the findings of three Texas A&M University economics professors, “Cash for Clunkers” ultimately caused auto industry revenue to shrink by about $3 billion in less than a year
The professors issued the results of their research last month in a National Bureau of Economic Research-sponsored working paper entitled “Cash for Corollas: When Stimulus Reduces Spending.”
“This highlights how — even over a relatively short period of time — a conflicting policy objective can cause a stimulus program to instead have a contractionary net effect on the targeted industry,” the trio of economists wrote, according to The Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch.
“By lowering the relative price of smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles, the program induced households to purchase vehicles that cost between $4,000 and $6,000 less than the vehicles they otherwise would have purchased.”
For one month, the nearly-$3 billion program increased the sales of tiny, low-profit-margin vehicles. In the next few months, though, all sales faded rapidly.
Overall, the Obama administrative initiative produced exactly no net increase for the number of automobiles Americans purchased. …
In October 2013, researchers from the Brookings Institution came to a similar conclusion, notes The Washington Post.
In a paper called “Cash for Clunkers: An Evaluation of the Car Allowance Rebate System,” the generally centrist think tank’s Ted Gayer and Emily Parker similarly determined that the Obama administration scheme failed to stimulate the economy. To the extent the program improved the air quality and the environment, Gayer and Parker wrote, the cost was exorbitant.
That isn’t even a complete analysis of the trainwreck that was Cash for Clunkers, as two comments remind us:
Today in 1968, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham played together for the first time when they rehearsed at a London studio. You know them as Led Zeppelin:
Tuesday is primary election day, and there are full ballots all over the state.
Of course, you can only vote on one party’s ballot. That’s because, despite the Progressive Era reform of primary elections replacing smoke-filled rooms (actually room, since the Republican Party was dominant in Wisconsin at the turn of the 20th century), voters cannot, for instance, vote for a Democratic candidate in the 17th Senate District and a Republican candidate in the Third Congressional District. That proves that the primary election is still about the parties and not the voters.
It remains similarly wrong that candidates for sheriff and other county elected positions have Ds or Rs after their name. In three counties in the great Southwest, there are candidates for sheriff only on the Republican ticket while the aforementioned 17th Senate District Democratic primary is taking place. As I’ve argued here before, county elected positions should not be partisan positions. The Milwaukee County Democratic district attorney’s John Doe partisan witchhunt demonstrates that you cannot trust partisan elected officials to do the right thing when partisan politics is concerned.
Making the sheriff position nonpartisan would end the charade of Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke as a Democrat in Name Only. The Democratic Party used to have, well, more conservative members, but Wisconsin Democrats have shunned from their numbers anyone who doesn’t support 100-percent tax rates on business, gun confiscation and taxpayer-funded abortion on demand.
Those who claim Clarke is lying about his party membership should really blame the governor who appointed him sheriff. That would be Gov. James Doyle, who is no one’s idea of a Republican. As it is, whether Clarke is a Democrat, DINO or anything else, he stands out because he lacks the blame-the-victim-or-society mindset of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and his police chief, Ed Flynn, and unlike those two Clarke actually believes in constitutional rights, to wit Milwaukee County citizens’ Second Amendment rights.
Of the Democrats I’m aware of running Tuesday, Clarke is the only one I would vote for. (I didn’t, since I don’t live in Milwaukee County.) Two of the three running for attorney general, Milwaukee County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne and Jefferson County District Attorney Susan Happ, don’t deserve the jobs they currently have. Happ gives sweetheart deals to multiple-offense drunk drivers. Ozanne has enacted the same catch-and-release law “enforcement” that has made Milwaukee such a wonderful place to live. (Not.) Happ, Ozanne and Rep. Jon Richards (D-Milwaukee) all said in a most illuminating Isthmus story the laws they wouldn’t enforce as attorney general because they don’t agree with the law. (Richards appears confused about the difference between making the law, which he now does as a member of the Assembly, and enforcing the law, which is what attorneys general and district attorneys are supposed to do.)
There is one interesting Democratic Senate primary, in the aforementioned 17th District to replace Republican-When-It-Suits-Me Sen. Dale Schultz. (Who, as I’ve said here before, deserves credit for pulling off the feat of voting against Republican initiatives that pass anyway.) The first candidate, chronologically speaking, was former Wisconsin Department of Transportation employee Ernie Wittwer, who excited the Democratic state leadership so much that they recruited a younger, more photogenic candidate, Pat Bomhack, despite the fact that Bomhack lost the only election he’s run in before, the 51st Assembly District Democratic primary two years ago, and initially announced he was running in the 51st. (The winner of that 2012 primary went on to lose to Rep. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), whose announcement he was running for Schultz’s seat helped push Schultz out the door.)
Democrats in the 17th have been writing letters to newspapers supporting Wittwer, not Bomhack, including the candidate who beat Bomhack but lost to Marklein. One assumes the Democrats will dutifully march behind Bomhack after he probably wins tomorrow, since Democrats abdicated fiscal responsibility of any sort once U.S. Sen. William Proxmire (D-Wisconsin) retired, but as a non-Democrat it’s been fun to watch that race. I have yet to see any substantive difference between the two; Wittwer spewed hatred of Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans not named Schultz, though with a pleasant demeanor.
Those who plan to vote in Democratic primaries should ask themselves which candidate will tell state Democratic Party leadership where they can go in the most unpleasant way possible. Democrats forfeited their right to lead this state because of Doyle’s grotesque mismanagement of the late 2000s, and Democrats’ refusal to admit anything was wrong, or that employees of government might need to pay for their benefits as the people paying their salaries have to do (for much lower quality benefits).
There is one interesting Republican Senate primary, in southeast Wisconsin’s 21st Senate District, between former Sen. Van Wangaard and Jonathan Stietz. The primary campaign has focused on two issues — which is the true conservative (a term that depends on whom you ask, of course), and whose backers are more obnoxious. I don’t live in that district either, but Republicans’ fear should be that one side’s backers have alienated the other side’s backers so much that the latter’s failure to vote will deliver the Senate district to the Democrat despite the district reportedly being Republican-leaning.
As with all primaries, one of the two most important criteria is who is most likely to win in November. The other is whose views are closest to yours.
Along that line, the only state treasurer candidate who deserves your vote is Matt Adamczyk, because he is campaigning to eliminate the office, unlike the other candidate, Randy Melchert, who I would have voted for otherwise. Neither of the candidates for secretary of state, former Rep. Garey Bies (R-Sister Bay) or Julian Bradley of La Crosse, want to eliminate the office. The way of thinking of those two and Melchert gets us such mediocrities as former treasurer Dawn Marie Sass, the Democratic candidate with this stupid idea, and current secretary of state Douglas La Follette, who should have been recalled instead of Walker. There are approximately 5.5 million reasons to get rid of those two offices.
There are two interesting Republican Congressional primaries. The first is in the Sixth Congressional District, where I used to live, to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Tom Petri (R-Fond du Lac). The winner is likely to be one of three legislators, Rep. Duey Strobel (R-Cedarburg) or Sens. Joe Leibham (R-Sheboygan) or Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend).
If I lived in the district, I would vote for Leibham. I don’t know much about Strobel. I do know a fair amount about Grothman, who is either so popular or in a Senate district so safe that an Act 10-inspired recall effort against Grothman failed to get enough signatures. I enjoy seeing how the mere mention of Grothman’s name turns Democrats into spittle-flinging obscenity-shouting maniacs. Grothman would be fun to watch in Congress, but Leibham is more likely to get elected to Congress since there are some Democratic pockets in the Sixth.
The other interesting Congressional primary is where I do live, in the Third Congressional District. One of the Republican candidates couldn’t be bothered to explore the southern end of the district she would represent, so your choice is between Army veteran Tony Kurtz and contractor Ken Van Doren.
I voted for Van Doren, who is probably the most libertarian Republican in this state, largely because I believe the Republican Party (of which I am not a member, I remind you) needs to be more libertarian. I would vote for Kurtz, whose GOP inspiration is Ronald Reagan, in November if he wins Tuesday.
Those who get to vote in Legislature or Congressional primaries need to remember that the offices they are voting for make more money by themselves than the vast majority of Wisconsin families. (State legislators make almost $50,000 per year, the secretary of state and state treasurer are paid nearly $70,000 per year, and you can multiply that by almost three for Congressional pay. Given those outsized salaries compared with the real world, you have the right to demand that candidates do what you want them to do.
“President Barack Obama stepped in front of the cameras on Thursday to utter words he hoped he would never say as commander in chief,” The Wall Street Journal reports. “After years of resisting the pull of more Mideast conflicts, President Barack Obama has sent the military back into action in Iraq, where he once accused his predecessor of waging a ‘dumb war,’ ” the Associated Press adds.
The New York Times: “In sending warplanes back into the skies over Iraq, President Obama on Thursday night found himself exactly where he did not want to be. Hoping to end the war in Iraq, Mr. Obama became the fourth president in a row to order military action in that graveyard of American ambition.”
The leads of the news stories thus relieve the commentator of the need to make the most obvious point: that the military action in Iraq constitutes, as the Journal’s headline understatedly puts it, a “policy reversal.”
In his televised statement [Thursday] night, the president tried to reassure his domestic audience that there were certain red lines he would not cross. “As commander in chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq,” he promised. “American combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq, because there’s no American military solution to the larger crisis in Iraq.” Though the smaller crisis is crisis enough.
One could argue the point either way, but for the sake of this column let’s stipulate that America is not “fighting another war” but merely engaging in a police action. There is nonetheless an escalatory logic to Obama’s decision–a sense in which the U.S. is already being “dragged into” the conflict.
The president offered two rationales for the action:
First, I said in June–as the terrorist group ISIL began an advance across Iraq–that the United States would be prepared to take targeted military action in Iraq if and when we determined that the situation required it. In recent days, these terrorists have continued to move across Iraq, and have neared the city of Erbil, where American diplomats and civilians serve at our consulate and American military personnel advise Iraqi forces.
Those military advisers were dispatched to Iraq in June, in response to the rapid advances of ISIL (also known as ISIS). Their presence was insufficient to prevent further rapid advances, and now the advisers themselves are in some danger, so the president has ordered airstrikes to protect them. Let us hope that turns out to be enough. But what if it doesn’t?
Logic would suggest the serious possibility that further escalation will prove necessary, especially in light of Obama’s history (noted here yesterday) of grossly underestimating ISIL’s capabilities. One assumes the White House and Pentagon are considering contingency plans short of full-scale ground combat.
But publicly ruling out that last possibility, while perhaps helpful from a domestic political standpoint, seems strategically unwise. It risks emboldening the enemy by making explicit the political (and perhaps psychological) constraints on the president’s ability to act.
It makes the worst-case scenario even worse–transforming a choice between backing down and paying in blood and treasure into a choice between backing down from the fight and backing down from a promise to the American people. And while no one doubts that Obama would very much like to avoid further escalation, does anybody believe–especially given the degree to which he has already reversed himself on Iraq–that the promise not to deploy combat troops is ironclad?
The president’s second justification is ISIL’s brutal campaign against religious minorities, specifically Christians and Yazidis. He described the plight of the latter group (also noted in yesterday’s column):
In recent days, Yazidi women, men and children from the area of Sinjar have fled for their lives. And thousands–perhaps tens of thousands–are now hiding high up on the mountain, with little but the clothes on their backs. They’re without food, they’re without water. People are starving. And children are dying of thirst. Meanwhile, ISIL forces below have called for the systematic destruction of the entire Yazidi people, which would constitute genocide. . . . We can act, carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide. . . . I’ve, therefore, authorized targeted airstrikes, if necessary, to help forces in Iraq as they fight to break the siege of Mount Sinjar and protect the civilians trapped there.
That’s something of a reversal, too. As we noted in 2007–in the most prescient article we’ve ever written about Iraq–then-Sen. Obama was asked by an AP reporter if preventing genocide would be a sufficient reason to keep U.S. troops in Iraq:
“Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now–where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife–which we haven’t done,” Mr. Obama told the AP. “We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven’t done. Those of us who care about Darfur don’t think it would be a good idea.”
Perhaps mindful of what he said back then, in his speech last night the president listed some criteria that set the current Iraq situation apart: “We have a mandate to help–in this case, a request from the Iraqi government,” and “we have the unique capabilities to help avert a massacre.”
It has the feeling of a post hoc rationalization, and Obama’s characterization of a “request” as a “mandate” does violence to the ordinary meanings of those words. (Maybe he can square that circle by invoking the taxing power.) But the qualifications do give him at least a patina of logical consistency.
It’s also true that the question he was asked in 2007 (whether to keep ground troops in Iraq) was different from the one he answered last night (whether to use air power 2½ years after the withdrawal of troops). But his remarks a few days before the last troops were withdrawn make clear that he had dispensed entirely with the premise that any dire consequences, including genocide, might follow. Obama on Dec. 14, 2011, at Fort Bragg, N.C.:
It’s harder to end a war than begin one. Indeed, everything that American troops have done in Iraq–all the fighting and all the dying, the bleeding and the building, and the training and the partnering–all of it has led to this moment of success. Now, Iraq is not a perfect place. It has many challenges ahead. But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.
Mission accomplished.
Somebody–though evidently not Winston Churchill–once observed that Americans will always do the right thing, but only after they’ve exhausted all other possibilities. If that is true, then Barack Obama is a real American.
Meanwhile, Obama’s problem with the truth showed up as well, Joel Gehrke reports:
President Obama refused to take responsibility for the lack of U.S. troops in Iraq, saying that American soldiers had to pull out due to political pressure from Iraqi leaders.
“This issue keeps on coming up as if this was my decision,” Obama retorted when asked if he had any second thoughts, in light of the terrorist force taking over regions of Iraq, about having pulled all American troops out of the country. “The reason that we did not have a follow-on force in Iraq was because a majority of Iraqis did not want U.S. troops there and politically they could not pass the kind of laws that would be required to protect our troops in Iraq,” he said.
A report in The New Yorker showed how President Obama failed to secure the status of forces agreement necessary to leave the troops in place after 2011.
Dexter Filkins explained:
President Obama, too, was ambivalent about retaining even a small force in Iraq. For several months, American officials told me, they were unable to answer basic questions in meetings with Iraqis—like how many troops they wanted to leave behind—because the Administration had not decided. “We got no guidance from the White House,” Jeffrey told me. “We didn’t know where the President was. Maliki kept saying, ‘I don’t know what I have to sell.’ ” At one meeting, Maliki said that he was willing to sign an executive agreement granting the soldiers permission to stay, if he didn’t have to persuade the parliament to accept immunity. The Obama Administration quickly rejected the idea. “The American attitude was: Let’s get out of here as quickly as possible,” Sami al-Askari, the Iraqi member of parliament, said.
When Obama announced the withdrawal, he portrayed it as the culmination of his own strategy.
“After taking office, I announced a new strategy that would end our combat mission in Iraq and remove all of our troops by the end of 2011,” he said. “So today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year.”
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 