Today in 1962, the Everly Brothers, on leave from the U.S. Marine Corps, appeared on CBS-TV’s Ed Sullivan Shew:
The number one British single today in 1965:
The number one single today in 1967:
Today in 1980, Rolling Stone Bill Wyman said he intended to retire from the Stones upon their 20th anniversary in 1982.
He was 11 years off.
The number one British album today in 1984 was Simple Minds’ “Sparkle in the Rain”:
The number one single today in 1987:
The number one British album today in 1989 was Fine Young Cannibals’ “The Raw and the Cooked”:
Today in 2008, fans of the Carpenters objected to plans to bulldoze the family’s house in Downey, Calif., immortalized on their “Now and Then” album cover:
The owners of the house were tired of fans peeking into the windows and leaving floral tributes for Karen Carpenter.
Birthdays begin with Robert Luke Harshman, better known as songwriter Bobby Hart:
In 10 days, the 400 or so high school basketball teams in the state will start on a journey that they hope ends in Madison.
Only 20 boys and 20 girls basketball teams get to go to Madison for the WIAA state basketball tournaments. But possibly as soon as next season, the road to state looks like it won’t go to Madison, but Green Bay.
The WIAA will move the state high school basketball tournaments to the Green Bay area unless the the University of Wisconsin athletic department can make the Kohl Center available in 2013 and 2014.
The decision, confirmed by WIAA executive director Dave Anderson on Thursday, inspired a top UW athletic official to accuse Anderson of waging a personal campaign to relocate the event, which brings tens of thousands of players, coaches and fans and generate about $9 million for Madison’s economy annually.
Well, that’s a great start to the last Madison state basketball tournament in who knows how long, isn’t it?
Anderson said it’s unclear if the WIAA’s contract with the UW, set to expire after the 2013 tournaments, would change if the Kohl Center is not available next year. If it is, he said the move to Green Bay would take place then.
He indicated the university had not altered its initial offer for 2013 and ’14 to play the WIAA tournaments Tuesday through Thursday. He also reiterated the WIAA is not interested in moving the basketball tournaments to the Dane County Coliseum or the UW Field House.
The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association moved a step closer toward moving its state boys and girls basketball tournaments to the Green Bay area, but at the same time dangled Madison and the University of Wisconsin one last carrot.
The Board of Control supported an executive staff recommendation to enter into a five-year deal with the Resch Center in Ashwaubenon if UW is unable to accommodate the tournaments according to the terms of the existing agreement.
The WIAA’s news release, posted Thursday night, is similarly opaque:
The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association Board of Control supported an Executive Staff recommendation to enter into a five-year agreement with PMI and the Resch Center in Green Bay, as soon as 2013 and extending through 2017, if the University of Wisconsin is unable to accommodate the State Boys and Girls Basketball Tournaments in accordance with the terms of the existing agreement.
Seeking a change in venue became necessary because of conflicts with the University of Wisconsin athletics schedule for 2013 and beyond. The traditional weekends of the State basketball tournaments in the Kohl Center have been reserved for the Western Collegiate Hockey Association playoffs in 2013, and initially, the Big Ten Conference Hockey playoffs beginning in 2014.
Now, a time out for some history: The first state invitational basketball tournament was held at Lawrence College (now University) in Appleton in 1905. The state normal schools (think of them as the UW four year schools not called Madison) started a state tournament in 1916, which the WIAA recognizes as the first state tournament. Except for a one-year visit to Wisconsin Rapids in 1936, UW–Madison has hosted every state tournament since 1920 — first at the UW Fieldhouse, and since 1998 at the Kohl Center (except for a few state girls tournaments at the Fieldhouse and the Dane County Coliseum).
The biggest state tournaments — football, basketball, hockey, wrestling, softball and golf — are held in Madison. Track was moved from Madison to La Crosse in 1990, and soccer moved from Madison to Milwaukee in 2003. Girls volleyball is held at the Resch Center, which is where state basketball apparently is headed.
The possibility of moving state basketball out of Madison first came up because of a set of potential conflicts with the Kohl Center with Big Ten hockey, which will begin as a conference-sanctioned sport in 2013–14. The Big Ten’s original plan was to have the conference’s regular season champion host the conference tournament. That would have required Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State and Penn State to reserve their hockey facilities (the Kohl Center in UW’s case) for tournaments they may or may not host. That obviously would crowd out any other potential use, particularly, in UW’s case, basketball.
Ultimately, UW prevailed on the Big Ten to do what UW’s current hockey conference started doing in 1988 and the Big Ten should have done in the first place — hold the tournament at a neutral site. Within the Big Ten geographic footprint, there are, by my count, at least eight facilities that host either National Hockey League or American Hockey League (the top hockey minor league) facilities large enough for a proper college hockey tournament.
The problem with having your regular-season champion host your conference tournament is what happens if the host fails to make the tournament final — your favorite cable sports channel broadcasts a conference championship game, with an NCAA tournament berth at stake, in an arena with thousands of fans dressed as empty seats. As fun as it would be to have the Kohl Center host a title game, NCAA tournaments moved out of on-campus hockey arenas years ago, and Division I conference tournaments don’t belong on campus.
Beyond a few additional conflict issues, there is one big issue that the Wisconsin State Journal’s Rob Hernandez pointed out:
WIAA executive director Dave Anderson has dropped hints since this facility conflict emerged that playing the state basketball tournaments in Madison — while rich in tradition — has come, in recent years, at a steep price.
Anderson is not the only one who sees the financial elephant in the room on this debate. Witness this email I received from a Madison man who worked a Camp Randall Stadium concession stand during the WIAA state football finals:
“I was embarrassed at the $8 cost of a Coke and hot dog,” the worker wrote. “Popcorn? $3.50! This courtesy of the UW “W” Club.
“I also heard stories of cars being towed for street parking violations. I would love to see a comparison of the proposed facility expense to be charged to the WIAA by Green Bay compared to that charged by the UW Athletic Department.” …
Indeed, the cost of attending these events is not cheap.
An Internet check this week of eight downtown hotels during the upcoming state boys basketball tournament showed the cheapest rates ranging from $107 to $206 per night.
Parking costs continue to be a major issue for WIAA events.
Anderson said the cost to park in lots run by UW Transportation Services has doubled in less than five years, from $6 in 2009 to $12 this winter. The WIAA had been told last year’s hike would convert the fee from a per-session rate to an all-day pass, according to Anderson, but it was not sold that way to those of us who parked next to Goodman Diamond for the state softball tournament and might not be practical given the limited parking near the Kohl Center.
Contrast that to what reportedly has been offered by PMI Entertainment Group, which runs the Resch Center in Ashwaubenon. According to the Green Bay Press-Gazette, PMI has offered to cap parking rates at $6 (at nearby Lambeau Field) and, with the Packers, split the revenue with the WIAA while Green Bay-area hotels have guaranteed affordable rates and no required two-night stays.
Madison’s past and present mayor, Paul Soglin, begs to differ about several points of contention:
MYTH
#2. Madison hotels require a two night minimum.
REALITY
Madison hotels are abundant and affordable. The vast majority of hotels have not, and do not require a minimum stay. There are 25 hotels that are participating in a Fan Package that begins in 2012, offering great rates and no minimum stays. The Greater Madison Convention and Visitors Bureau has offered to assist in developing fan hotel packages in the past and is delighted that WIAA agreed to pursue that option.
MYTH
#3 Parking costs in Madison are high.
REALITY
Event parking rates at City of Madison and UW-Madison campus parking ramps will be in effect. Parking in city ramps near the Kohl Center will be only $4. The University is guaranteeing their rates until 2020. There will be free shuttles from other locations to help offset parking costs. …
MYTH
#5 Madison doesn’t care about the WIAA.
REALITY
Financial assistance and support from the University, City of Madison, Dane County, Greater Madison Convention & Visitors Bureau as well as the hotel and restaurant community are included in current proposal. There has been an incredible collaborative effort to put together the proposal. Madison has a long history, and continues to host many other WIAA state tournaments throughout the year. We welcome our high school athletes and their families and fans from around the state year-round.
Madison’s parking rates are not high if you’re comparing them to Milwaukee. Madison’s parking rates are high if you’re comparing them to anywhere else in Wisconsin. (If you think east-side-campus parking is bad now, you should have been in Madison in the 1980s.) Soglin, a native of Chicago, also appears to have an interesting definition of “affordable” if that means $107 to $206 per night. And where was all this fan-affordability collaboration before now? At those prices, you might hope your team loses its first state game.
Whether the tournament is in Madison or Green Bay, the WIAA may need to rethink how it does state basketball anyway, based on people voting with their feet:
Attendance at the state boys basketball tournament has dipped greatly in the past two years and, overall, in four of the past five.
In 2011, the first year of the five-division state tournament, total attendance fell to 73,094. That was 12,359 fewer than 2010, the last year of four-division play with one extra session, and the first time attendance fell below 80,000 since 1990 — the last year of a three-division format.
It’s been the same with the state wrestling tournament, which has seen a decline in the past four years, dropping from 66,206 — an all-time high — in 2007 to 60,902 last year.
The switch from four to five divisions took away the Thursday morning session, so an attendance drop isn’t surprising. But if you’re concerned about dipping attendance, playing two fewer games won’t improve attendance. Moving state from Madison to Green Bay won’t improve one, shall we say, delicate issue that has been the case ever since I’ve been paying attention to state: Milwaukee teams don’t draw well at state. (For related but converse reasons, the chance of state basketball in Milwaukee is approximately zero.)
One improvement with moving state from Madison to Green Bay might be in atmosphere. The UW Fieldhouse can best be improved with a wrecking ball, but the atmosphere of a full Fieldhouse was great once you maneuvered around the buckets picking up melting snow from the leaking roof. The Kohl Center has all the amenities fans could ask for, but at 17,000 capacity it is not remotely close to full for state games, particularly state girls games. (Back in the 1990s, UW briefly considered putting in grass at Camp Randall Stadium, which would have forced the state football championship games to go elsewhere, or at least most of them. The flip side to that is that having your football stadium one-eighth full for a state title game doesn’t really make for great atmosphere either.)
The WIAA’s share of blame for dipping attendance goes back to the regular season and the WIAA’s current apparent policy of arranging conferences by their schools’ enrollment instead of by geography. Three of Ripon’s six Eastern Valley Conference opponents — Freedom, Waupaca and Clintonville — are one hour or more away from Ripon by car or bus. The WIAA always swings between geography and enrollment in deciding conference lineups, but enrollment affects football much more than other sports. And with the economy what it is today and gas prices what they will be later this year, fans are increasingly deciding the time off of work and/or the cost of driving to Madison isn’t worth the trip.
Madison isn’t letting state go without a fight:
It’s odd that the video doesn’t show why the first person on the video is famous, so I will:
There is also one big potential unintended consequences of the state basketball tournament’s leaving Madison. Wisconsin is the only state in the U.S. in which the entire state boys and girls basketball tournaments are on free TV. It’s helpful for the originating station for the state tournament to be in Madison; that will not be the case when the tournament moves to Green Bay. There is no guarantee moving state out of Madison will mean games before Saturday, and perhaps even the entire tournament, won’t move to Fox Sports Wisconsin, which will take state away from those without cable or satellite TV.
Readers might think from my anti-Madison rants that I would like to see state basketball leave Madison. Readers would be making the wrong assumption. Having state on the UW campus gives high school students statewide a taste of the UW, something that won’t happen with a Green Bay state tournament. (The Resch Center is on the opposite side of Green Bay from the UW–Green Bay campus, even though UWGB’s men play at the Resch Center.) Neither Madison nor Green Bay is remotely close to the geographic center of the state, but Madison is slightly closer to the population center of the state (which as of 2000 was, believe it or don’t, Markesan) than Green Bay.
So sad that money has got in the way of giving our children a great experience.
When I was in school. Going to state, meant Madison. Why? Madison is our Capitol. (Regardless of current politics) Madison is home to The University of Wisconsin and our Badgers.
Going to State meant playing on the same floor, grass, ice, etc. as our heroes from the Badgers. Have our team and players name on the same scoreboard, sitting on the very benches.
Too bad our WIAA has become so greedy. Our UW has lost its sense of civic duty to the youth of our state. And once again The City dropped the ball. (To busy building bike boxes to even know the ball was in the air)
On the other hand, other comments make you understand why Anderson wants state basketball to leave Madison (if that really is the case):
Good, two weeks of less traffic in Madison each spring.
UW should have priority over their own facilities. If the WIAA couldn’t run it on Tuesday – Thursday, then too bad. Green Bay is a ghost town in March. Nice people, but hardly a destination that I’d want to go to be in the state tournament.
Madison put itself in this position and deserves what it gets. Hopefully the mayor will wake earlier from his nap next time. The UW just made it clear what it thinks of a tradition going back to 1920 and its loyalty to the community it lives in.
It became open for discussion and competitive bidding. But Madison doesn’t know how to compete with other cities, or considers itself beneath such things. And the UW didn’t see that it was weighing a tradition that engaged the entire state community vs 300 yahoos from St. Cloud State. We are paying for our entitled sensibility. If you look at Epic, the Edgewater, Spectrum, Madison Prep,and now the tournament, you see a city that has lost its way. We don’t like competition. Our chief product is acrimony. Other cities are more than willing to exploit it. This trend will continue unless we become honest about ourselves and change things. Madison may be livable, but we aren’t as great as we think we are. Losing the tournament isn’t about lost revenue. It’s about lost leadership.
As a native of Green Bay who now lives in Madison, I say good for Green Bay. I get so sick of the arrogance around here that the sun rises and sets around this town. … People in this part of the state seem to think that Green Bay is a one-horse town and some backwater. If Green Bay can accommodate 70,000 plus fans every weekend for a Packer game, I think they can handle entertaining 10,000 people for a basketball tournament.
And then there are comments that are completely irrelevant, yet understandable:
Perhaps the liberal retards in Madison can organize an anti-Walker rally for that weekend instead and invite their government union thug buddies from out of state for a big group hug. And don’t forget to bring the tractors. This way all the restaurants, bars and hotels can still get the revenue.
The GB/Fox Valley area has everything and more that Madison has when it comes to entertainment, shopping and lodging minus the protesters and socialists. Some of the comments here just prove what a pretentious entitlement attitude some Madison residents have. I can’t blame them, I wouldn’t want to come here either.
Of course, Recallarama had nothing to do with the WIAA’s decision to move its biggest state tournament out of Madison. (For one thing, most high school coaches are teachers, and most WIAA management are former teachers.) But Madison is about to let leave an event that has more economic impact than any winter/spring sports event other than an NCAA basketball first- and second-round That’s something UW should have thought about
My prediction is that if state goes to Green Bay, a Madison-area state legislator will introduce a proposal to have the Department of Public Instruction run high school sports instead of the WIAA. The rationale, which I first brought up in the WIAA’s fight to preserve for itself broadcast rights, will be that high school sports are funded by tax dollars, and the WIAA uses tax dollars with no public accountability. At least it would make Superintendent of Public Instruction elections more interesting.
The Wisconsin Alumni Association is planning its annual Alumni Weekend April 27–28.
In keeping, I guess, with the Wisconsin Idea, that the University of Wisconsin’s boundaries are the boundaries of the state, the WAA plans a fish fry.
The WAA further whets your appetite for their fish fry by showing off everything you’d ever want to know about the Wisconsin fish fry:
According to the WAA, the thousands of fish fries statewide tonight combine the best traditions of our immigrant heritage, our specifically German heritage, our state’s Catholic heritage, and our state’s civil disobedience to the idiotic idea called Prohibition. (The latter is a bit ironic, since Prohibition was a byproduct of the Progressive Era, something progressives usually decline to remember or point out.)
Other than our honeymoon, which included the 8-foot-long 115-pound marlin that now adorns our living room wall, I have rarely fished, but I have always eaten fish. Having southwest Wisconsin relatives means we now occasionally get supplied with fish caught on the Mississippi River backwaters this time of year. I don’t see the appeal of ice fishing, but I certainly enjoy its results. I’ve also eaten shrimp ever since a family vacation to the Forest County Butternut Lake and the restaurant next door to our cabin. (I avoid the Christmas in-law tradition of oyster stew, however.)
The only thing I’d quibble about in this graphic is the mention of the beer to the exclusion of other adult beverages, specifically the official mixed drink of Wisconsin, the brandy old fashioned.
This does not, by the way, make me more inclined to go to Alumni Weekend, seeing as how I’m the only UW alum in the house. But it does help tonight’s dinner plans.
Today in 1969, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash recorded the album “Girl from the North Country.”
Never heard of a Dylan–Cash collaboration? That’s because the album was never released, although the title track was on Dylan’s “Nashville Skyline” album.
Today in 1970, during her concert in the Royal Albert Hall in London, Joni Mitchell announced her retirement from live performances … a retirement that lasted until the end of the year.
The number one British album today in 1979 was Blondie’s “Parallel Lines”:
Today in 1989, David Coverdale of Whitesnake married Tawny Kitaen, who had appeared in Whitesnake videos:
The marriage lasted two years.
Birthdays start with Orville “Hoppy” Jones of the Ink Spots:
Tommy Edwards (the singer, not the legendary WLS radio DJ):
I hesitate to post this lest this give a tax-happy legislator near you an idea, but …
For those who (correctly) believe Wisconsin is a tax hell, Greg McFarlane of Investopedia passes on the fact that some places are even worse tax hells — not necessarily because of the size of the tax bite, although there are big tax bites …
New York City in particular has taken cigarette taxes to unforeseen places, collecting a tax that dwarfs the price of the cigarettes themselves. The city and state levy a per-pack tax, meaning that if you buy a pack anywhere in the five boroughs, you’ll remit 61 cents in prepaid sales tax, an additional $1.50 to the city, and $4.35 more to the state. Add the wholesale price of the cigarettes themselves, plus the additional markup retailers have to charge their remaining customers (after all, fewer people are now buying cigarettes in New York for some reason), and a pack can now cost you around $15.
… but because of what gets taxed:
Want to park your vehicle in a commercial lot in D.C.? That’ll cost you 12%. Perhaps you live in Chicago and enjoy eating. The Second City is one of the few jurisdictions that charges a tax on groceries (2.25%.). Meanwhile Hawaii charges an accommodation tax to “transients,” i.e. vacationers, of 7.25%, in addition to roughly 4% sales tax. The state of Hawaii has you where they want you: it’s not as if you can vote with your feet, and drive over the border to enjoy the beaches in a neighboring state. …
In 1991, the Los Angeles Lakers and Chicago Bulls met in the NBA Finals. The Bulls were a media phenomenon at the time, employing Michael Jordan at his professional zenith and a supporting cast of lesser millionaires. Since each Bull earned half his money on “business trips,” the state of California reasoned it was only fair to take a cut. Other states and municipalities followed suit, and today’s traveling pro athlete has to maintain quires of paperwork to cover his obligations. …
For activities more taboo than playing sports, various jurisdictions are ready with an outstretched palm and another form for you to fill out. For instance, the Internal Revenue Service charges 0.25% on wagers that any state or Indian nation has determined to be legal. If you think that operating in the black market excuses you from paying a tax, think again. The IRS also charges 2% onillegal wagers, even using the word “illegal” on its FAQ page. (The relevant document, Form 730, uses the less inflammatory language “Tax on wagers other than wagers described on line 4a.”) As to why you’d ever confess to illegal gambling on your tax return, that’s between you, your conscience and the IRS.
McFarlane also mentions a tax that no longer exists:
Up until 2009, the state of Tennessee attempted to thwart the illegal drug trade by unconventional means. In addition to search-and-seizure and prosecution, the state employed good old-fashioned “revenuing.”
When the “crack tax” was authorized in 2005, it required sellers of cocaine, marijuana and, yes, moonshine to pay on the proceeds of their sales. Dealers were supposed to pay anonymously at the state revenue office, at which point they’d receive proof of payment. At the very least, the law didn’t require the dealers to issue receipts to customers and state a refund policy.
And believe it or not, people actually paid. In the year after the “crack tax” was passed by the legislature, drug dealers contributed $1.8 million to the state coffers. Fortunately for the illicit drug underworld throughout Tennessee, a state court of appeals struck down the law as unconstitutional, ruling that a legislature can’t outlaw a substance yet charge people a fixed amount for creating and selling it. Drug dealers in neighboring states then presumably rejoiced. To put the absurd cherry on a sundae of lunacy, after the law’s repeal some dealers had their tax payments refunded. With interest.
Wisconsinites know that “the flag for the local union” is actually the Wisconsin state flag. The only union it represents is Wisconsinites. (For non-Wisconsinites, the “1848” is the year of our statehood, on May 29. This little kerfuffle shows that the decision several years ago to add “Wisconsin” and “1848” to the flag because it looked too much like other state flags had unintended consequences.)
Since the premise of the entire story is based on that flag, erase the first three sentences, and what do you have? Obama saying something about something that has to do with his reelection.
Besides being sloppy, Donovan Slack’s reporting describes the nature of today’s media. You have technology, you use it to get the latest story out online, apparently whether correct or not. (Then again, read a Gannett Wisconsin newspaper, and you’ll see Gannett’s commitment to proper English. Or not.) This basic error is the sort of thing that is supposed to be the province of inexperienced, untrained bloggers, not supposedly professional reporters.
The worst part of this is that one of Politico’s founders, Jim VandeHei, is from Oshkosh.
On the other hand, Stuff Journalists Like blows the lid off the actual work of journalists following the latest Internet trend:
It shouldn’t be surprising that Republicans, conservatives and libertarians oppose President Obama’s reelection (as you should), because Obama represents the opposite of everything Republicans, conservatives and libertarians stand for, or should stand for. (Beginning with fiscal discipline, the opposite of which is Obama’s proposed next federal budget.)
On the other hand, Obama’s three years and one month in office has given people of every political stripe reasons to not vote for him Nov. 6. (I’ve always said liberals should be at least as suspicious as conservatives and libertarians of the federal government. The federal government and our duly elected representatives brought us Jim Crow laws, the Vietnam War, government experiments that injected black men with syphilis, and the Chicago Police’s “police riot” during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, among other abuses of power.)
Do you consider yourself a supporter of civil liberties?
The ACLU accused Obama of violating the U.S. Constitution by having a U.S. citizen killed without judicial process. U.S. Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) said that Obama’s actions might be an impeachable offense.
Do you support drug legalization and oppose the war on drugs?
In May 2008, Obama campaign spokesperson Ben LaBolt said that Obama would end DEA raids on medical marijuana in states where it’s legal. However, in February 2010, DEA agents raided a medical marijuana grower in Highlands Ranch in Colorado, a state where medical marijuana is legal. Also in February 2010, DEA agents raided a medical marijuana dispensary in Culver City in California, a state where medical marijuana is legal. Furthermore, in July 2010, the DEA raided at least four medical marijuana growers in San Diego, California. Also in July 2010, the DEA raided a medical marijuana facility in Covelo, California. Then in September 2010, the DEA conducted raids on at least five medical marijuana dispensaries in Las Vegas, in Nevada, a state where medical marijuana is legal.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, following a recent anti-piracy legislative debacle with SOPA and PIPA, will lead his second effort of 2012 to push Internet-regulating legislation, this time in the form of a new cybersecurity bill. The expected bill is the latest attempt by the Democrats to broadly expand the authority of executive branch agencies over the Internet. … The White House proposal recommended that the Department of Homeland Security be given broad regulatory authority for cybersecurity matters over civilian networks.
Do you consider yourself a clean-government type, opposed to big money in politics?
While running for President, Obama had promised that he would not have any lobbyists working in his administration. However, by February 2010, he had more than 40 lobbyists working in his administration. …
President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign identified its top fundraisers on Tuesday, including 61 people who each raised at least half a million dollars. Altogether, the more than 440 fundraisers collected at least $75 million to help Obama win a second term.
In December 2010, Transparency International reported that corruption was increasing faster in the U.S. than anywhere else except Cuba, Dominica, and Burkina Faso.
In June 2010, the New York Times reported that Obama administration officials had held hundreds of meetings with lobbyists at coffee houses near the White House, in order to avoid the disclosure requirements for White House visitors, and that these meetings “reveal a disconnect between the Obama administration’s public rhetoric — with Mr. Obama himself frequently thrashing big industries’ ‘battalions’ of lobbyists as enemies of reform — and the administration’s continuing, private dealings with them.”
On a conference call with members of President Obama’s 2012 reelection committee Monday evening, campaign manager Jim Messina announced that donors should start funding Priorities USA, the Democratic super PAC run by two former White House staffers, Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney.
Do you believe in the balance of powers between the executive and legislative branches?
In February 2009, U.S. Senator Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia) expressed concern that Obama’s dozens of czars might violate the U.S. Constitution, because they were not approved by the U.S. Senate. U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) expressed a similar concern in September 2009.
Did you oppose the Iraq War during the George W. Bush administration?
In April 2009, antiwar activists who helped elect Obama accused him of using the same “off the books” funding as his predecessor George W. Bush when Obama requested an additional $83.4 billion from Congress for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – a provision which Obama had voted against when he was a Senator.
In May 2010, it was reported that the Obama administration had selected KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton, for a no-bid contract worth as much as $568 million through 2011 for military support services in Iraq, just hours after the Justice Department had said it would pursue a lawsuit accusing the Houston-based company of taking kickbacks from two subcontractors on Iraq-related work.
Do you believe presidents should follow the law when beginning military operations? From the New York Times:
The White House, pushing hard against criticism in Congress over the deepening air war in Libya, asserted Wednesday that President Obama had the authority to continue the military campaign without Congressional approval because American involvement fell short of full-blown hostilities.
Did you oppose the Patriot Act, first enacted during the Bush administration? It’s still law. (And if you opposed Bush’s warmongering and then crowed over U.S. forces’ killing Osama bin Laden during Obama’s presidency, you are a hypocrite.) And civil libertarians should be screaming bloody murder about the National Defense Authorization Act.
Are you an environmentalist? Justify this from the London Daily Mail:
A study of pollution in 34 Chinese cities has found that the electricity generated by power stations to drive electric vehicles leads to more fine particle emissions than petrol-powered transport.
Do you support unions?
In November 2010, [Service Employees International Union Local 1199] United Healthcare Workers East announced that it would drop health insurance for the children of more than 30,000 low-wage home attendants. Mitra Behroozi, executive director of benefit and pension funds for 1199SEIU stated, “… new federal health-care reform legislation requires plans with dependent coverage to expand that coverage up to age 26… meeting this new requirement would be financially impossible.”
Early in his presidency, President Obama made disparaging remarks about business owners whose companies had corporate jets. … In Wichita, Kansas, the home of private aircraft manufacturing has suffered tremendously, as thousands of union employees employed by Cessna and Beechcraft have been laid off, not to mention the thousands of jobs affiliated with general aviation lost across the country including manufacturers, part suppliers, fuel, pilots, mechanics, FBO services and insurance providers. Additionally, due to the loss of significant sales, use, income environmental and aviation tax revenues, thousands of local, state and federal employee positions, many of which were union jobs, have disappeared.
The Keystone Pipeline was estimated to create or save 20,000 union jobs. But apparently to Obama environmentalists are more important than union workers. And apparently $5-per-gallon gas is OK by the Obama administration.
Are you concerned about the number of Americans without health insurance? Politico reports:
Fewer Americans received health insurance from their employer in 2011, continuing a trend that has seen the figure decline over the past three years. … Meanwhile, the number of Americans without any insurance has increased, climbing to 17.1 percent this year, compared with 14.8 percent in 2008.
Do you support public schools?
While living in Chicago and Washington D.C., Obama expressed his true opinion of America’s public education system by sending his own children to private schools.
Do you believe the “rich” should pay more in taxes and higher tax rates?
On September 12, 2008, Obama promised, “I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” However, less than three months into his Presidency, he broke that promise when he raised the cigarette tax. Studies show that poor people are more likely to smoke than rich people.
Although Obama had campaigned against George W. Bush’s “tax cuts for the rich,” as President, Obama actually signed a two year extension of them.
Do you oppose bailouts and handouts for politically connected corporations?
While Senator, Obama had voted for the $700 TARP bank bailout bill, which included corporate welfare for AIG. As President, Obama signed a stimulus bill that protected AIG bonuses. Prior to signing this bill, Obama had said, “when I’m president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.” However, after reading “line by line” and signing the stimulus bill that protected the AIG bonuses, Obama pretended to be shocked and outraged at the bonuses, and said, “Under these circumstances, it’s hard to understand how derivative traders at A.I.G. warranted any bonuses at all, much less $165 million in extra pay… How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?” and also said that he would “pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses.”
Liberals are so completely in the tank for Obama that they won’t pay attention to evidence that Obama is hurting the liberal cause, any more than liberals of the 1990s opposed Clinton despite the fact that Clinton sold Democrats down the river whenever it politically suited him. Given how most second presidential terms go, Obama’s second term will be even more accomplishment-free than his first, unless voters are stupid enough to vote for Democrats along with Obama. If that is the case, then the first two years of Obama’s second term will be even worse than the first two years of his first term, until (in this scenario) voters regain their senses and fire Democrats as they did in 2010.
Meanwhile, there’s today’s scheduled meeting between Obama and Gov. Scott Walker at Master Lock in Milwaukee, observed thusly by the Troglopundit:
The question is: who should be the most outraged? The most shocked? The most demoralized? The hard core conservatives, because Walker is meeting with Comrade BO? Or the hard core liberals, because Obama is meeting with the Great Wisconsin Fascist?
I think I can honestly say, in complete objectivity: it’s the latter.
Sure, hard core Tea Party conservatives would prefer not to give Obama any hint of conservative acceptance leading up to November’s election, and a friendly meeting with Walker might just give him that. It might just give Obama some aura of bipartisanship.
Worse: it might give Obama a chance to take ownership of Wisconsin’s budgetary success.
On the other hand: it’ll force Obama to take ownership of Wisconsin’s budgetary success!
President Obama just released his own budget. He’s under increasing fire for his own economic “policies;” the skyrocketing national debt; stagnant unemployment numbers. He can’t very well come to Wisconsin and talk about how bad things are.
Visiting Master Lock will force him to say good things about Wisconsin’s economy. He’ll have to tout the positives, or else admit his own economic “policies” are total crap. It’s looking up, he’ll have to say, smiling, in Wisconsin! With Walker by his side, he’ll have to tell America how well things are going here!
Today in 1961, singer Jackie Wilson got a visit from a female fan who demanded to see him, enforcing said demand with a gun. Wilson was shot when he tried to disarm the fan.
The number one album today in 1964 encouraged record-buyers to “Meet the Beatles!”
The number one single today in 1969:
The number one British album today in 1969 was “Diana Ross and the Supremes Join the Temptations”:
The number one single today in 1975 came from the number one album, “Heart Like a Wheel”:
Today in 1988, Def Leppard had to cancel its concert in El Paso, Texas, because of threats that followed singer Joe Elliott’s calling El Paso “the place with all those greasy Mexicans.”
Birthdays begin with Brian Holland of the Holland–Dozier–Holland songwriting team:
It is, first, a bit hysterical, not to mention hypocritical, for opponents of Gov. Scott Walker to bray about a projected budget deficit at the end of the 2011–13 budget cycle, 16½ months from now.
Remember that the previous governor and the party that controlled the 2009–11 Legislature mismanaged the state to a $2.9 billion GAAP deficit and a $3.6 billion structural deficit heading into the 2011–13 budget cycle. (The MacIver Institute compares this and the previous budget for those with short political memories.) And when the deficit in the 2009–11 budget was fixed by ending most of the collective bargaining rights state and local government employees have never deserved, Democrats’ reaction was (1) to deny that any deficit existed, and (2) to propose raising taxes.
This projected deficit totals all of 0.24 percent of the state’s $59.2 billion 2011–13 budget. (That right there shows how pathetic state finances are when a nine-digit budget hole doesn’t even total 1 percent of state spending. Those who don’t find that remarkable wrongly assume that government makes any positive contribution to the state’s quality of life.)
The shortfall is being blamed on lower-than-projected tax collections. That is remarkable in two senses — the $2.1 billion in tax increases the previous Legislature foisted on us was supposed to fix the state’s fiscal problems, and the 2011–13 budget does not contain significant income tax cuts. Those who assert that tax increases never bring in the revenue they’re projected to bring in have another piece of evidence in their favor.
Walker’s apparent answer is to use $25 million of its $140 million share of the national foreclosure settlement to plug into the projected budget hole. Someone on Facebook, who is (surprise!) a state employee, asked how that was different from Gov. James Doyle’s oft-criticized raid of state transportation funds to fill Doyle’s numerous budget holes.
The more apt comparison is to Gov. Scott McCallum’s use of tobacco settlement funds, which, like the foreclosure settlement, comes from financial sources outside Wisconsin. McCallum doesn’t deserve any sound-financial-management awards either, but Doyle’s use of funds generated within the state by drivers and truckers for transportation was far worse. (Not to mention illegal, in the case of his Patients Compensation Fund raid.)
For those concerned about that projected budget deficit, the state could fix it by cutting 2,017 state employees, each of whom cost taxpayers on average $71,000.
The other reality, however, is that the 2011–13 state budget was insufficient, since it did in fact increase spending, contrary to everything the Wisconsin left has told you.
The 2011–13 budget, like every budget before it — whether created by Republican or Democratic governors, and whether passed by Republican, Democratic or split-party-control Legislatures — was created using political math — that is, cash accounting — instead of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. (A reader commented that the Internal Revenue Service requires that businesses with $5 million in revenue use GAAP accounting. That limit is about 0.0169 percent of annual state spending, which makes the state’s requirement of balanced budgets on only a cash basis literally insane.)
The first step to eliminating budget shortfalls is to create realistic budgets in the first place, budgets based on GAAP, not cash, accounting. As George Lightbourn of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute puts it, “If our government made that one budget change, then any commitment to spend, no matter how far into the future, would have to be backed by actual money. … Revolutionary? Hardly, since this is the same accounting standard that every local government and business in Wisconsin has learned to live with.”
A state budget based on GAAP accounting would have to be at least $3 billion smaller than the current state budget. Fiscally responsible legislators (a hard concept to grasp in this state, I realize) would have to make considerably more difficult decisions on what state government, and local governments as well, should and should not do. Should the state be spending tens of millions of dollars every year to buy land to take it off the tax rolls? Do we need the redundant State Patrol? Does a state of 6 million population require 3,120 units of government?
The state Constitution also needs to have permanent, nearly-impossible-to-bypass controls on spending and taxes as well, in addition to a statutory GAAP accounting requirement. The lack of spending and tax increase controls makes article I, section 22 of the state Constitution — “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” — impossible in practice. It also turns your state into a tax hell with unbalanced budgets.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 