Quote of the Day
Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Reelection:
A Proxy for Governor Walker's Public Union Reform Law?
First of all, I haven't really discussed the public union reform law since it was passed and signed into law. I believe the legal challenges, based on procedural questions, are frivolous in nature, and the injunction placed on the law will be lifted either directly or on appeal. One can hardly suggest that the public as a whole or the legislature did not understand what the collective bargaining reform law was about; in fact, the Senate Democrats specifically knew exactly what it meant, and that's the reason they escaped to Illinois. The Senate Democrats were aware that the collective bargaining reform could be separated from the budget bill and it would not require a quorum vote; this is a risk they were knowingly taking by refusing to be part of the democratic process. Let's make one thing perfectly clear: it makes no difference. The Senate could bring up the exact same piece of legislation again, and the Senate Republicans wouldn't have to say a word, let the Senate Democrats put up however many amendments they were entitled to, and the Republicans would simply vote them all down. It's political hardball, the kind of thing that the Democrats in the 111th US Congress had no problems doing on multiple occasions. Thus, there is no substantive basis for the appeal; there is no evidence whatsoever that the return of the Senate Democrats would have had any material bearing on the legislation in question.
Second, let me say I'm not a fan of elections for judges. I think, as in the case of yesterday's reelection battle involving Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, it becomes a proxy of political interests, i.e., will the judge rule the correct way from the decision's political impact? You would hope, from a layman's perspective, that the judge rules without reference to any personal political preference but in line with the evidence before him and due professional care. [Personally, I would like to see lifetime tenure (e.g., for federal judges/justices) replaced with single 20-year terms. I think it would be vibrant for our political system to give more judges opportunities every generation to serve on the appeals circuit or Supreme Court.]
Prosser and JoAnne Kloppenberg, the incumbent's liberal opponent, are in a dead heat; Prosser maintained a very slim lead out of nearly 1.5 million ballots, but the lead finally flipped today, giving the challenger a slim 206-odd vote lead; she has claimed victory. [Prosser will likely pursue a recount. It is an amazing coincidence, don't you think, how Democrats always seem to come from behind in close races after trailing for most of election night, e.g., Gregoire over Rossi in the first Washington gubernatorial election, Al Franken in the 2008 US Senate race from Minnesota, etc.?]
Governor Walker claims that the election wasn't a referendum on him, but a typical Wisconsin spring election has a 20% turnout (vs. yesterday's 33%). More importantly, Prosser beat Kloppenberg in the mid-February primary, getting 55% of the vote in a 4-person race: how else does one explain Prosser's losing a 30-point lead in less than 2 months? In fact, Prosser is a former Republican Wisconsin Assembly Speaker.
There is always danger in outrunning one's mandate; Scott Walker won 52% of the vote, and Barack Obama won 53%. Most recent polls show Scott Walker at 43% public approval rating (Obama at 45%). Walker has lost support in particular with school-age student households.
I was leaning strongly to mentioning in a recent post a blurb I saw about public safety unions planning to sue Walker over his exemption for their own collective bargaining rights; the unions in question consider the politically motivated exemption as divisive in their solidarity with other unions.
I don't have to say when an incumbent is below 50% in approval, he's in trouble. There are some bright spots here: first, make no mistake about the fact that the unions and their sympathizers went all out against Prosser as a proxy for Walker and the judge held his own, more than tripling his vote count from the primary. The progressives can spin this any way they want, but most of Kloppenberg's support came from Dane (highly progressive Madison) and Milwaukee Counties, which went heavily against Walker last November. (It might sound bad that Walker lost his home county, but his opponent was the Milwaukee mayor.) The fact is the conservative base did an amazing job rallying support, in a traditionally progressive state that had not elected a Republican US Senator in decades. Second, it appears that Walker's message about private sector employees having to subsidize better benefits for public sector workers is making in-roads: I've seen one poll suggesting 46% approval from private sector union employees. Third, it is utterly amazing given massive sympathetic news coverage of the public sector unions and rallies, Walker seems to have bottomed out at 43% approval.
I already discussed in yesterday's post how I would have handled this situation vs. Scott Walker. I will say, from a public relations perspective, Walker did a very poor job responding to the allegations; in particular, as I mentioned, there's a perception from young families that Governor Walker is balancing the budget on the backs of their kids' education. There are a number of things I would have said in this regard: first, educational quality is best addressed by a sustainable business model, which Wisconsin did not have. Second, teacher union collective bargaining agreements generally protect older, mediocre teachers at the expense of new teacher talent in the event of layoffs; union policies also forbid much needed reforms like merit pay and layoff criteria reform. Third, Wisconsin public school teachers already earn very competitive compensation relative to private schools and schools in other states.
But what to do now? Well, no sense crying over spilt milk; don't equivocate now, which would simply be seen as a contemptible loss of principle and sign of weakness. Scott Walker needs to do a better job promoting the benefits of public union reform in practical terms, in particular aimed to families with children in public schools, e.g., pay the good teachers better, enable administrators to weed out the mediocre teachers, etc. Finally, Walker needs to demonstrate that he has learned from this experience: he has to do a better job managing expectations, and he must do a better job at reaching out across the aisle and not simply relying on political hardball.
Rich Liberals Don't Take the Opportunity
To Pay Optional Higher Taxes:
Say It Ain't So, Joe!
"Blue state Massachusetts! Where high taxes aren't so new!" Howie Carr points out of nearly 2 million state tax returns processed to date, just 862 have taken the opportunity to pay the old higher tax rate of 5.85% (vs. the current 5.3%) Remember all those rich Democrats like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates arguing that rich people should pay higher tax rates? Matthew 7:16
Political Potpourri
Methinks Obama's reelection chances are much exaggerated... But you wouldn't know it by the headlines. The Week claims that there are 5 reasons why Obama is "unbeatable"; CBS News says a weak GOP field and an improving economy put Obama in a strong position. Others point out how Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were in worse positions than Obama before storming back to win their reelections in a walk.
Obama launched his reelection Monday, asking America to send him back to finish the job he started.
It's difficult to assess Obama's reelection battle without knowing whom the GOP will choose and/or whether a strong third party candidate (on the level of 1992's Ross Perot) emerges. But it's very difficult to see Obama gaining the support he needs to repeat a 53% of the vote. Independents and moderates who broke for Obama are unlikely to give him the benefit of a doubt. He is not outside Washington: he is Washington.
This blog is not favorably disposed towards the reelection of Barack Obama, but I want to be objective. I will point out that I think it is highly unlikely that the job situation will improve enough to help Obama; there's some evidence that high oil prices are dampening economic growth and shaking consumer confidence. We have an unsustainable, baked-in federal deficit, with record deficits and debt; Obama has had a vacillating foreign policy, a widely-panned, convoluted health care law, policy reversals (Afghanistan surge, Libya, KSM trial, Gitmo, etc.); his programs (e.g., the 2009 stimulus) have not worked as advertised, and he has handled a number of crises poorly (e.g., BP spill). He and the Democrats did not pass a FY2011 budget with huge majorities in each house of Congress. With the exception of the year-end tax cut extension, Obama has not taken the initiative on major policy. We have trillions in unfunded entitlement liabilities.
It's interesting to see the GOP field lining up. Contrary to what others believe, I think the GOP has a deep bench: Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and Mitch Daniels have been successful in blue/purple states; all of them will stress administrative experience and a fresh, out-of-Washington perspective. Mitt Romney, interestingly enough, is focusing on bashing Obama on health care, which implies a frontrunner perspective. Yes, right now Obama may be winning polls against them, but that and $5 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Romney is highly articulate, has plenty of business/turnaround expertise, and looks the part of President.
Fukushima Nuclear Incident Update
My latest annoyance with the Fox News coverage is another example of the 'yes, but' talking point, which continues to feed into anti-nuke rhetoric: on the morning news, they literally discussed improved news over improved control over contaminated water leaks to the sea literally under the title 'too little, too late', ominously noting unsafe levels in small fish (as usual, Fox News fails to provide necessary context); it's outrageous that Fox News is attempt to trump positive developments from an anti-nuke bias. First, I reported the small fish story days ago. Second, the measurement was just above a conservatively-set safety benchmark, and you would have to eat a lot of relevant little fish to get anywhere near the equivalent exposure of a medical test. "TEPCO has estimated that these discharges would increase the effective dose to a member of the public by 0.6 mSv, if he/she were to eat seaweed and seafood from the discharge area every day for a year." ["The worldwide average background dose for a human being is about 2.4 mSv per year."] Third, Fukushima off-shore fish are not being marketed. Fourth, relevant radiation levels have been on a declining trend, and this will be reflected in future catches. Fifth, you will see whatever marginal amount is in the vicinity of the shore diluted by ocean waters.
The Atomic Power Review notes:
- morning: There is more discussion of TEPCO bringing other storage on site and making existing local capacity available (hence, the 11,500 ton release of low radiation water) to make room for more highly contaminated water from reactor buildings, tunnels, etc. (which will not be dumped at sea). Will Davis also explains that reactors 2 and 3 will join reactor 1 to inert nitrogen in the primary containment vessel and drywell as a proactive measure to control for any accumulating radioactive (more likely) or zirconium cladding-reaction hydrogen by displacing oxygen. (This is done to "stabilize the atmosphere and prevent ignition of the hydrogen".)
NEI notes:
- daily: I had seen an earlier report initially not reporting dye showing up offshore through the power cable pit. This post notes the marker dye was eventually identified, and the subsequent plugging of the hole by liquid glass was effective. Furthermore, the cracked pipe water (resulting in other injections of liquid glass basically supporting the tunnels, trenches, etc.), which had also make its way to sea, also was contained. (I did see a CNN alert late last night for once reporting a positive development.) Coolant to reactor pressurized vessels 1 through 3 and spent fuel pools 1 through 4 continues as needed. Critical paths of clearing water storage capacity (via existing daisy chain mechanisms) for contaminated water from various basements and tunnels continue to hamper efforts to fully restore powering of instrumentation and repairing or replacing equipment and system components.
IAEA notes:
- daily: There is a continuing trend of decreasing radiation trend across the board (air, water, food, etc.) In addition to the plugged leak resolution, there is a discussion of low-radiation water from reactors 5 or 6 being offloaded to make storage capacity for higher-radiation water from reactors 1 through 3.
The Hiroshima Syndrome blogger again bashes TEPCO for not using an engineer to view its press releases (e.g., inert nitrogen into primary containment). He discusses the Edward Markey bill (which I discussed a week ago). He does his Hiroshima Syndrome roundup, discussing the far more dangerous (than the incident) contagion of anti-nuke propaganda, in particular sweeping Germany and even China, possibly looking to replace planned nuclear power plants with--fossil fuel power plants. (I'm sure the climate change scientists must love this development...) I have often criticized President Obama on other policies, but I give him props for not giving into the global anti-nuke bashing of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear incident.
One of his readers computed that the amount of radiation being released in low-contamination water was the equivalent of the becquerels consumed if everybody on the planet ate a banana for 3 weeks...
Political Humor. I've sometimes referenced Giglish as a source for late-night jokes. The blog recently posted a notice it will be shutting down at the end of June because operational costs aren't covered by their advertising business model. A periodic reminder: you can find summaries of the latest jokes at websites like About.
"Half a million women employees are suing Wal-Mart claiming men are better paid. Wal-Mart hired a bunch of female lawyers to defend them because they thought they could get them cheaper." - Jay Leno
[No, they just figured, given their customer base, that female lawyers could find a way to stay within their corporate legal affairs budget...
On a more serious note, most people who have any background in statistics realize the Dukes v Wal-Mart class-action suit is ideologically correct nonsense; even if the justices don't understand research methodology (which wouldn't surprise me), they probably don't want to open Pandora's box here. In fact, most new college degrees today are being awarded to women, and cases where the female partner is earning more is no longer the exception to the rule.
But more to the point, the last job before I became a full-time PhD student at the University of Houston was with this small multi-branch APL timesharing company. (The niche industry, which focused on value-added software services using mainframe computers, found its business model undermined by the PC revolution and probably folded before I finished my doctorate.) My boss was a bombastic, egocentric character with a habit of continually reminding others about his 17 years of experience in the industry; our branch office was just inside the loop in the southwestern section of Houston (near Greenway Plaza). My boss tired of his own commute and decided to move the office closer to his home in the northwest suburbs outside the loop (which greatly inconvenienced me). The real story was he was starting out his own computing services company operating out of the same office suite; I didn't know the specifics, but in subsequent conversations with his boss, the parent company knew about it and seemed to be fine with what he was doing. There was a large room outfitted for his own programming staff, not yet hired; here's the point: he told me he was going to hire exclusively female programmers because "they're cheaper". A rather perverse gender bias, don't you think? But it does point out a point I've repeatedly made in this blog: if an employer discriminates against quality professionals based on irrelevant individual characteristics like age, gender, ethnicity or race, etc., it provides a windfall hiring opportunity for other employers.
On a side note, when he moved the office, he took my office chair for his programmers' suite and replaced it with some cheap chair he must have bought at some auction, complete with a broken caster. I got caught swapping back my old office chair and was terminated on the spot. I am not that familiar with how many other people have lost their jobs over office furniture...]
"According to a poll, 55 percent of college students approve of the job President Obama is doing. That may change once they graduate and try to find a job." –Jay Leno
[Living off of government loans, being "educated" on issues by pervasive progressive groupthink, going to concerts and on multiple vacations every year: yes, President Obama must think he's still back in college...]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Beach Boys, "Kokomo". This is the last Beach Boys #1 and major hit. This concludes my Beach Boys series. The next series will feature the group ABBA; when I was younger with a limited budget for albums/CD's, I often waited for greatest hits compilations to be released (and/or purchased the singles I liked), but ABBA was one of the exceptions. I was a fan way before the musical stage rediscovered their hit music.
