Concealed carry quick thought

I don't know about you, but the thought that the person next to me on the sidewalk could be strapped doesn't exactly fill me with a sense of safety.  In fact, I will feel manifestly less safe when the law goes into effect.

I'm sure a whole lot of gun owners will feel more macho and self-confident, though, so I guess it's all worthwhile.

Now we just wait for the inevitable "accidental" shooting, or the first crime committed by a person with a concealed carry permit, etc., etc.

A query for the Wisconsin Supreme Court

Ahem.

If the Open Meetings law is no longer in force, and the legislature can pass laws while openly flouting that law, what other laws aren't in force anymore?

If anyone gets ticketed or arrested this week, they should just say, "I'm sorry officer, but now that an explicitly written law has been ruled meaningless by the state's highest court, who's to say what's actually law and what isn't!"

Nice can of worms those four justices just cracked open, don't you think?

The Real Scott Walker

Now he's refusing to defend the domestic partner registry.  Because he thinks it runs afoul of the state's ban on gay marriage.

How dare gay people be happy together while Scott Walker is in charge.  Personal freedom is great in his book, unless you're gay.  Suddenly the state then has a compelling interest in making sure that you are unfree.

Matt Yglesias deadpans, "No doubt anti-gay discrimination is just a pragmatic response to state-level budget cuts and not at all part of an ideological agenda."

As long as Republicans continue to crusade against equality for homosexuals in every sphere of life, their talk about smaller government and personal liberty is meaningless.

Massive irony alert

This article in the MJS has to be a joke, right?

Nope, it turns out Scott Walker, friend of state employees, wants to tell them how we "can't thank them enough" for their efforts.

Walker wants workers to nominate colleagues for outstanding innovation, dedication and going the extra mile, though miles logged at the protest marches wouldn't count. And he's asking the public to nominate workers who gave excellent customer service.

If you want to know what some workers think about the idea, visit the comment section on YouTube under Walker's video. "We can't say thank you enough from one end of the state to the other, from one state agency to another," Walker said about his new State Employee Recognition Program a few days ago, just in time for State Employee Appreciation Week.

"I think I just sprained my eye-rolling muscles," was one of the many responses. As of Thursday, 15 people clicked that they liked what he had to say, and 681 disliked it.

"This is the moral equivalent of beating up your wife and then taking her out to dinner to make up for it," another wrote.

My reaction was to ask just what sort of an asshole thinks he can run an entire election campaign on denigrating state workers, and dedicate virtually his entire term in office thus far to screwing state workers, then turn around and give an award to express gratitude to those same people.  Not that state workers don't deserve our thanks and praise.  Of course they do, but Scott Walker is not the person to do it.  The sole purpose of this is to give Walker a nice photo op.

Honestly, I think the irony from this might be massive and dense enough that it threatens the fabric of space-time itself.

The "vote fraud" two-step

With a tip of the hat to my friend Tom "illy-T" Foley, check out these dance moves from the Prosser camp:

With a recount in the race now under way, this is an effort to fact-check those claims, which have come in e-mails, blog postings and a press release last week by the Republican National Lawyers Association, which blasted the recount requested by Kloppenburg and called instead for an investigation into “potentially massive fraud that occurred in Dane County.”

Yes, it's the vote fraud two-step.  There's never any fraud when we win, but there's always voter fraud on the other side, even when they lose.  You have to kind of admire that kind of doublethink.  I wouldn't imagine it's easy training one's mind to be so dissonant, er, flexible.

But why bother?  Well, in an unrelated post, Jeff Simpson from Blogging Blue draws attention to this piece from the New York Times on the efforts of Republicans to curtail voting.

Spreading fear of a nonexistent flood of voter fraud, they are demanding that citizens be required to show a government-issued identification before they are allowed to vote. Republicans have been pushing these changes for years, but now more than two-thirds of the states have adopted or are considering such laws. The Advancement Project, an advocacy group of civil rights lawyers, correctly describes the push as “the largest legislative effort to scale back voting rights in a century.”

Anyone who has stood on the long lines at a motor vehicle office knows that it isn’t easy to get such documents. For working people, it could mean giving up a day’s wages.

A survey by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law found that 11 percent of citizens, 21 million people, do not have a current photo ID. That fraction increases to 15 percent of low-income voting-age citizens, 18 percent of young eligible voters and 25 percent of black eligible voters. Those demographic groups tend to vote Democratic, and Republicans are imposing requirements that they know many will be unable to meet.

Isn't that convenient?  Make a lot of noise about vote fraud even when your side wins and the potential payoff is a law that keeps the other side's voters away from the polls permanently.  Combine this with Governor Walker's anti-union moves, which are clearly designed to destroy that base of Democratic power, and they can conceivably make it impossible for the Democrats to win.  In theory.

Besides the obvious potential for backlash, I have real doubts about the legality and even political wisdom of any "voter ID" law.  Consider: If the state requires any voter to obtain a special photo ID in order to vote, is there any way to construe that as anything other than a functional poll tax?  Bear in mind, poll taxes are outlawed at all times and in all places under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  The only remedy would be for the state to eat the cost, which would amount to many millions of dollars.  Does Scott Walker really think that in the midst of his slashes to education and services, that the voters want the state to throw good money after bad to install an unnecessary voter ID system?  Fiscal conservatism, that is not.

Then again, what's the point of principles if you can't use your time in power to destroy the opposition?

Cowles recall petition to be filed on Thursday

I have no idea if the votes exist up here to recall Cowles.  But, according to the Press-Gazette, there are enough signatures to get the process started.  And the fact that I heard an ad with Cowles promising to bring jobs and prosperity to Wisconsin on the radio today is proof enough that at least the man is worried.  As well he should be.  Balancing the budget on the backs of teachers and public servants ought not to be something undertaken without consequence.

UPDATE: More proof that Walker's forces are in retreat?  Here's the Press-Gazette again, this time with the news that the Budget Committee probably isn't going to go along with Walker's budget proposals on recycling and prescription drugs.  The plot thickens.

A bit of advice for Vicki McKenna

I usually try to avoid deliberately pissing off people who protect my life and property.  Like, oh, I don't know, police officers and firefighters.  Or calling people who enforce the law "thugs."

Also I try to avoid lying about people booing the national anthem and things like that.

I think these are decent guidelines for people with self-respect.

Jay Bullock tallies Sarah Palin's lies on Saturday so you don't have to

I may be an atheist, but this post even I can call "doing God's work."

Reading a well-written takedown of Sarah Palin is a better morning pick-me-up than coffee.  Definitely worth the read.

Am I wrong to dream of a Trump-Palin ticket for the GOP in 2012?  It could go down in history as "Dumb-and-Dumber."

Let's call the whole thing off

I happen to know quite a bit about insurance, for reasons of career and education.  But that knowledge is pretty much unnecessary to decipher that this is a terrible idea:

Mandated increases in auto insurance coverage will be rolled back under legislation signed by Gov. Scott Walker on Tuesday.

The measure rolls back coverage minimums passed by the Democrat-controlled Legislature in 2009 but would still require motorists to have coverage.

"This is one more step toward empowering consumers across the state of Wisconsin," Walker said at a Capitol bill-signing.

"Empowering consumers."  Sounds awesome, doesn't it?  Except it really isn't.  And there's no reason for it.

The group Citizen Action of Wisconsin has released a report that questions insurance industry claims that changes made by Democrats caused an increase in insurance costs of at least 33%.

Wisconsin historically has had some of the lowest car insurance rates in the country.

The website carinsurance.com lists Wisconsin car insurance rates as of March as being 40% below the national average - similar to the rates in the surrounding states except for Michigan, where rates are slightly higher than the national average.

So this obviously isn't really about allowing insurance companies to cut premium.  And even if it was, I can tell you that most of the time when consumer protections get loosened up and insurance companies get more leeway, they'll almost always find a way to justify either keeping premiums exactly where they are and reducing benefits, or raising premiums.  It makes perfect sense.  Why would Insurance Company XYZ suddenly decide they want to make less money per insured?  And rolling back the coverage limit from $50,000/$100,000/$15,000 (for per person/per incident/property damage) to $25,000/$50,000/$10,000 just gives insurance companies cover to charge the same while providing less coverage.  But wait until you see some of the other sweetheart provisions.

The measure also would allow insurers to put drivers buying insurance for the first time into a high-risk category, allowing them to charge higher premiums.

It also includes a provision that would allow insurers to insert clauses into their policies that could lower the amount drivers collect when they are hit by underinsured drivers.

This is an auto insurer's dream come true.  Your teenage child who is all excited about getting their driver's license at 16?  Prepare to pay outrageous premiums to provide coverage.  And as if getting hit by someone without enough insurance, or no insurance at all, wasn't already a worrisome proposition, now if that does happen, your own insurance company can screw you too.

So, summing this up: Pay the same or possibly more for less coverage.  Check.  Pay out the ass to cover first-time drivers (read: your children).  Check.  And get left up a creek without means of propulsion if some moron who was too lazy to have insurance happens to injure you in an accident.  Check.  And this is what Scott Walker calls "empowering consumers."  That's an interesting name for it, because I would call it a massive middle-finger to consumers.  I guess Scott Walker says po-tay-to, while I say po-tah-to.

Just a thought

If a law professor like, I don't know, this one, can blow off reasonable criticism from a liberal blogger (namely, this one) by telling him to "go read Sartre" (insinuating that all liberals share Sartre's sentiment that "class must be eliminated at all costs"), can we liberals tell said law professor to "go read Rand" and use that as our discussion-killer too?

Not that I want to imply that all conservatives believe as Rand believed that only the most extreme laissez-faire capitalism is a legitimate economic system, God does not exist, altruism is evil, and the intellectual elite are fully entitled to engage in terrorism if the huddled masses don't appreciate their genius. That would be wrong.

Just as wrong, in fact, as implying that any liberals actually care what Jean-Paul Sartre (a committed Marxist) wrote on politics, let alone agree with it.

Postscript: I'll just mention that I have to concede that I myself agree with Rand on the point about God not existing. I'm not happy about this, because my experience of Rand is pretty much summed up like this: I read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and decided I'd like to grow up to be nearly everything that woman hated. I guess no one's perfect.

A few words about collective bargaining rights

In my opening post, I spoke a few words about my opposition to Governor Walker's actions against public employees and school teachers, as well as his cuts to education. My only real reason offered at the time (I was sort of rushing through items, trying to get to all of them) was that my mother is, in fact, a public school teacher. I think it's time I went a little further in explaining why my opposition isn't based simply on personal interest.

First, and most obviously, these cutbacks are being put into action by a governor who has made much of calling for "sacrifice" in difficult times. That sounds nice, doesn't it? Except what is the reality? Who is being asked to sacrifice? Surely not everyone. Instead, the governor and Republicans in the legislature - not satisfied to say to their wealthy donors and corporate allies that now isn't the best time for tax cuts and increased exemptions - chose to exclude those groups from the sacrificing. While facing a huge deficit, complaining about it daily, and making much of how easy of a life teachers supposedly have. This is like spending all your money to party and then complaining that you don't have enough to pay your mortgage.

Second, just where do people think economic growth comes from? I know this question seems rhetorical, but it really isn't, because there seems to be an entire political party in this country that has decided that cutting taxes is their new dogma, and that if they just cut taxes enough, the economy will grow and everything will get better. Never mind that St. Reagan himself actually raised taxes not once, but twice. Nationally, we've been waiting eight damn years, and still it hasn't worked. However, on a state and national level, it's pretty apparent that education is the handmaiden of economic growth. If you want growth, cutting into education isn't the way to go about it.

"But [Redacted]," my conservative friends say, "this measure of cutting back pay, school funding, and collective bargaining rights is necessary because of the deep recession we're in right now." That argument sounds sensible until you actually think about it. Requiring pay increases above CPI to be approved by referendum (How dare those teachers want to make more money in their career like everyone else!) absolutely guarantees that no such increases will ever happen. Who is going to vote yes on a referendum that says, "Do you want the state to spend more money paying teachers?" A large number of people would probably vote yes on a referendum asking if the state should instead fire all teachers and hope our students learn by osmosis (hence why populism is almost always a terrible idea). But even setting aside pay, consider the issue of collective bargaining.

The idea is that those rights need to be given up because of the extraordinary economic conditions, right? Leaving aside the possibility of this being a purely political, rather than pragmatic, operation (there's strong evidence suggesting it is*, but bear with me), suppose the economy really does grow, and in a couple years public employees and teachers ask Madison, "Please can we have our collective bargaining rights back?" The same people who disingenuously say that these actions are necessary now aren't very likely to change their mind when things get better, are they? Why not? Just look at how they handle tax policy. "Oh, look," they said in the early 2000s, "the economy is growing, and we have a surplus. We should give it back with massive tax cuts." Then, when things turned downward, the catch phrase was, "You can't raise taxes in the middle of a recession!" And now, when we're starting to claw our way out, it's time for (wait for it) more bloody tax cuts! So what on earth is going to make people of this same persuasion suddenly decide to give back collective bargaining and fair pay for government employees and teachers?

Then there's a much more basic point, and that is hypocrisy. Endlessly, you hear people on the right in Wisconsin bemoan our educational system, how flawed it is, etc., etc. But do any of these folks want to put more money into the system? Absolutely not. Instead, they'd rather blame teachers for not doing their jobs well enough when class sizes are already far too big, and then take away the funding that prevents that situation from getting worse. How on earth is a teacher supposed to help or care about an individual student when they have fifty students in each class? We may soon find out. You get what you pay for. You can either pay less and shut the hell up about school quality, or put funding where it needs to be. Education --> economic growth. Any questions?

Finally, I want to relate a personal anecdote. My mother has been going to get her hair done by the same woman for I don't even know how long now. Recently, her hairdresser started a conversation about exactly this topic. Perhaps not surprisingly, the hairdresser was very pro-Walker, and very angry with the Senate Democrats for leaving the state. Leaving aside the fact that this woman admitted to not knowing anything really about the bill until the Democrats protested, she stated that teachers needed to pay up because the state needs to "cut back." My mother, never shy about speaking her mind, pointed out that since she'd be taking an 8% pay cut, perhaps she needed to "cut back" as well, and find a less expensive alternative to this woman as far as her hair was concerned. In other words, business owners might want to be a little less callous about advocating for the massive screwing over of the very people who buy their goods and services and thus keep their businesses open. That statement, at least, isn't so much boycott advocacy, but simple common sense that if you drive the middle-class down and down and down, eventually there won't be a market for anything. And what happens to your economy then?

I'd prefer if Governor Overreach just said he was taxing his political opponents. At least that would be honest. And I'd love it if it turns out that the first person to feel the backlash from these policies is Justice Prosser. Not just because of irony, but also as a little bit of retribution for the disgraceful campaign certain interest groups (looking at you, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce) ran against Justice Louis Butler a couple years back. What goes around, comes around, and here it comes to bounce one of yours off the bench. Just saying.

*I think the fact that unions are virtually the only group that supports the Democratic Party and (important conjunction!) have the resources to take advantage of the Supreme Court's questionable-at-best-and-ludicrous-at-worst decision in Citizen's United provides pretty strong motivation for Republicans to want to suddenly engage in massive union-busting nationwide, don't you?

Fitzgerald doesn't like court orders, but Scott Walker loves trains after all

Obeying court orders is for suckers.  That has to be Scott Fitzgerald's thinking.  How else could he accuse Judge Maryann Sumi of "[flying] in the face of separation of powers" in blocking the implementation of a law she had enjoined from being published?  An injunction means STOP.  I don't see the issue here, unless Fitzgerald is asserting that A) checks and balances no longer exist, or B) the judiciary branch only gets to exercise its authority to interpret law and appraise the legality and constitutionality of laws when people not named Walker and Fitzgerald are in power.  Pretty embarrassing statement, that.

Still, that little tidbit isn't nearly as deliciously ironic as this article I spotted in the Green Bay Press-Gazette yesterday.  Yes, the governor who told Congress to take their $810 million for high speed rail and shove it right up their ass is now asking for $150 million to improve the high-speed rail line between Milwaukee and Chicago.  And why, pray tell, should anyone in Washington believe him?  What's going to stop Governor Privatize Everything from waking up tomorrow, remembering that he really doesn't like trains at all, and throwing another temper tantrum about how he really doesn't want that money?  And even if he doesn't change his mind, I really don't think people in Congress will be in a mood to fork over $150 million after the way Walker made such a show of his intention to turn down high speed rail dollars in his campaign.

Besides, if Governor Walker really wanted to do some good, and I'm only half joking, what he really needs to do is build a road or railway that allows those of us in Northeast Wisconsin to get to Madison quickly (US 151 out of Fond du Lac doesn't count) without having to take Wisconsin 26 right through the Speeding Ticket Capital of the World.  I speak, of course, of Rosendale, Wisconsin, a one stoplight town with a real penchant for catching people going one mile/hour over the limit and nailing them with a ticket.  I count myself extremely lucky never to have been pulled over there, but I do have one of the t-shirts a convenience store in town sells.  It's got a picture of a police car on it and reads, "Rosendale: It's the ticket!"  Just saying.