New York City's left turn could lead to crash

New York City is a cultural center, a commerce center, a finance center, a media center and every now and then an ideological inanity center. Its voters proved as much in electing as mayor Bill de Blasio, an income equality kind of guy who just could become the next John Lindsay, a mayor who helped make a great city a sad city until other mayors, after a long, hard climb, finally made it great again.

"Some on the far right continue to preach the virtue of trickle-down economics," he said in his inaugural speech. "They believe that the way to move forward is to give more to the most fortunate, and that somehow the benefits will work their way down to everyone else."

What utter buffoonery this is. What defenders of free markets preach is the virtue of freedom that helps create prosperity while giving us all more of a chance to pursue the kind of life we want. It is the left that preaches a trickle-down theory by which an ever bigger, ever more coercive government grabs money from taxpayers and passes it on in welfare programs that would be less needed if there was less intervention in the first place. What's most vitally needed to help the poor are such cultural changes as far fewer fatherless homes and political changes that unleash the saving power of the market place.

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To finance more prekindergarten programs in the city, he wants higher city income taxes on those making more than $500,000 a year. He wants to take money from charter schools, which are not rich, to spend on other schools. I am not sure how he's going to finance it, but I've also read in a roundup of promises that he wants to do sweet-deal favors for the city's unions. On top of that, he apparently wants to swipe money from park programs financed privately to spend on other park programs, and he wants a minimum wage hike.

It's starting to look like Wisconsin will be bringing up the rear when it comes to legalizing marijuana for medical use. Some 20 states have already done so, and others are moving in that direction. Meanwhile, in Madison, the third attempt to pass a sensibly worded bill is going nowhere again this legislative session.

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But first she has to figure out a way to get it past Republican Sen. Leah Vukmir of Wauwatosa, who chairs the Committee on Health and Human Services where the bill is languishing. As time grows short in this legislative session, Schaeffer is urging her supporters to call the senator, who has refused to allow a public hearing.

In a statement Thursday, Vukmir said she believes the federal Food and Drug Administration, and not the Legislature, is the proper entity to approve new drugs. She added that the Wisconsin Medical Society doesn't support the bill, and that even a Democratic majority couldn't get it passed. "The bill is supported by the vocal minority in our state," Vukmir said.

I question her definition of minority. A Fox News poll last year found 85% support for medical marijuana, including 80% of Republicans. Other surveys support those big numbers. Even generalized legalization of pot is gaining traction. A Marquette Law School poll from last year found 50% in favor in Wisconsin.

The term was popularized (though not first used) by U.S. President Richard Nixon in a November 3, 1969, speech in which he said, "And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support."[2] In this usage it referred to those Americans who did not join in the large demonstrations against the Vietnam War at the time, who did not join in the counterculture, and who did not participate in public discourse. Nixon along with many others saw this group of Middle Americans as being overshadowed in the media by the more vocal minority.

POLITICIANS THINK AMERICAN VOTERS ARE MORE CONSERVATIVE
THAN THEY REALLY ARE

When we compare what legislators believe their constituents want to their constituents’ actual
views, we discover that politicians hold remarkably inaccurate perceptions. Pick an American
state legislator at random, and chances are that he or she will have massive misperceptions about
district views on big-ticket issues, typically missing the mark by 15 percentage points.

What is more, the mistakes legislators make tend to fall in one direction, giving U.S. politics a
rightward tilt compared to what most voters say they want. As the following figures show,
legislators usually believe their constituents are more conservative than they actually are. Our
attitude measurements are most accurate on the questions about same sex marriage and universal
health insurance – and in both instances the legislators’ guesses about their constituents’ views
were 15-20 percent more conservative, on average, than the true public support for same-sex
marriage or universal health care present in their districts.

Something Overlooked In the Kleefisch Child Support Bill

Yeah, I am sure you are all tired of the brou ha ha surrounding the Child Support Bill introduced and withdrawn by State Representative Joel Kleefisch. As Zach published earlier, Rep. Kleefisch received help in preparing the bill from wealthy campaign contributor Michael Eisenga. I am not going to recount all of that…but I did find it interesting that the media was all fired up over the ghost writing but not necessarily the cap on earnings (at $150,000 to be exact) that could be considered in family court when child support is being determined.

And in support of that limitation, we have this quote from State Representative Tom Larson:

Larson said the public isn’t served by a system that allows children to receive such a large sum in support payments.

“There’s some value in having some hardship with life,” Larson said. “Even if I were a rich person, I probably would struggle a little bit to make sure my kids earned what they get. What’s the purpose of this money going to child support if it’s only going to create a child with maybe less values.”

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So if we think having a lot of household income is creating the wrong values in our children…then why aren’t we taxing the absolute living hell out of rich parents until we reduce them to the per capita income for the State of Wisconsin? That’ll show ‘em! I mean after all: spare the rod, spoil the child?

Yes, I do believe [state employees] paying a fair share of health care and pension costs is something we needed in order to be able to balance the budget.

This is a very unfortunate position for her to take for a couple, three of reasons. First of all, Burke fails to acknowledge that if the budget at that time was even truly out of balance, it's not because the workers were receiving luxurious benefits. If there was a hole in the budget, it was caused when Walker and his fellow corporate stooges spent hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks and other giveaways to their campaign donors.

Secondly, as was discussed in Forbes by Rick Ungar at the time when Walker was dropping the bomb of Act 10 on the state, taxpayers actually contribute nothing to the cost of the pensions public employees receive. The reason for this is because public sector employees traditionally were paid less than private sector employees, deferring that money to their pensions.

In other words, private and public sector workers were being paid about the same. The difference came in the fact that public sector workers looked further ahead and put some of their pay at the back end of their careers. This was backed up by a report from the Economic Policy Institute which clearly showed (on page 7) that public sector workers did receive better benefits in exchange for lower wages:

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To put it as succinctly as I can, what Walker did was take the money from the public sector workers to give to his campaign donors and other benefactors. That cut in pay, not to mention the thousands of jobs lost when he cut fund shares with local governments, meant that public sector workers had to make cut backs of their own. That causes a ripple effect as private sector businesses - especially for non-essential things like restaurants and the such - to cut back on their own staff if not close altogether. When Burke says that she is not willing and/or interested in finding a way to reverse this, it makes me question how serious she is about fixing the economy or bringing good paying jobs back to the state.

1. David Cummings
05:45 PM 1/10/14

State investigators discovered the material was leaking from the bottom of a storage tank, and had overwhelmed a concrete dike meant to serve as "secondary containment" around the tank, Dorsey said.

"That was going over the hill into the river," Dorsey said. "Apparently, it had been leaking for some time. We just don't know how long."

--from: http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201401090044?page=2&build=cache

Sounds like a failure of management to me.


2. rkipling
06:34 PM 1/10/14

It is an unforgivable management failure unless someone sabotaged the tank, the containment dike and alarms. Regular rounds should have discovered this problem even if alarms were sabotaged. Everyone in my company down to entry level employees understands the importance of proper hazardous material storage, containment, monitoring and use. They are tested on knowledge of the MSDS.

The containment volume should be sized to hold more than the entire contents of the tank. More than one alarm should have alerted employees to the problem. I could write pages upon pages of why this should never have happened. The CEO of this company should resign in shame along with everyone else in the chain of responsibility. We would fire anyone who allowed the conditions for this potential spill to exist under their responsibility. If we were buying an existing facility, the deal would not close and come under our management until an exhaustive safety review had been completed and appropriate fixes made.

The more I think about this the angrier I get. They have defamed the entire chemical industry and industry in general. Just unforgivable. Someone should see jail time.

Leaders of closed Milwaukee voucher school are now in Florida

A husband and wife running a private Milwaukee voucher school that abruptly closed last month — after accepting a total of more than $2.3 million in taxpayer money — now live in a gated community in Florida by the beach, records show.

Records show Taron and Rodney Monroe started a new private Christian school this year in Daytona Beach. While the school in Milwaukee was running on fumes, they were telling Florida friends they had experience getting government grants for religious schools. Now the Monroes, who lost their five-bedroom house in West Bend to foreclosure, have disappeared.

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Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction records show LifeSkills was nearly booted from the voucher program in 2010-'11 because the Monroes were listed as school administrators but didn't have bachelor's degrees — a program requirement that went into effect in 2010. Once Taron Monroe hustled to get hers and the state was convinced that Rodney Monroe was no longer in a teaching or administrative position, the taxpayer money continued flowing, according to the DPI.

John Johnson, DPI spokesman, said Wednesday that the department's authority over voucher schools, which are all private and predominantly religious, is limited. There's nothing in state law that allows the DPI to take action against a private school because of low academic performance or because of a school leader's personal finances, Johnson said.