Sotomayor cites poor wording

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's pick for the Supreme Court, believes she used a poor choice of words when she indicated a Hispanic woman would make a better judge than a white man, the White House said Friday.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that he believes after having conversations with "people who have talked to her," that Sotomayor would do a better job of articulating her belief that "your experiences impact your understanding."

"I think she'd say that her word choice was poor," Gibbs said.

In her 2001 remarks, which have led many on the right to call her a racist, Sotomayor said, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Given a chance to clarify those remarks, Sotomayor said "I did not mean to offend, but it is known that Hispanic females possess an intrinsic aptitude which explains why these women have excelled in the judiciary."

Larry Summers could not be reached for comment.

Something aboot Sarah

The Obama Campaign's Spread the Smears website has raised new questions about Republican V.P. candidate Sarah Palin's background.

We just went through a summer-long witch hunt by the Republican attack machine trying to smear Barack Obama. They said Barack's birth certificate is fake and that he is ineligible to become President. Now it is only fair that the press investigate these serious questions about Sarah Palin's place of birth.

So far, no proof has been offered that her parents were U.S. citizens when Sarah Palin was born. They also claim her birth was in Sandpoint, Idaho; conveniently just 50 miles from the Canadian border.

Let's get to the truth of this matter.

Furthering the Obama campaign's concerns are former-Mayor Palin's odd behaviors and speech patterns, which have never before been witnessed within the beltway of Washington or the social circles of New York City. These include.

• Guns and fishing
• Sounding Canadian (Ask her to say "About")
• Consuming moose
• Five kids by one father
• Hockey mom pride (Only in Canada, we have soccer mom's in the U.S.)
  

Spread the Smears concludes.

That is the meat of the matter, former PTA Leader Palin continues to this day to behave like a Canadian, not an American. She cannot be eligible for the Vice Presidency.

Elsewhere, on the stump in Green Bay, Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden took an unprecedented shot at the Democratic led House and Senate.

Name me a single issue that affects your life - jobs, health care, education, energy - where you are better today than 2006. If you liked the last two years, you'll like the next four years of a Obama-Biden-Pelosi-Reid controlled government, because there is no change.

The backdrop bonanza

Dan Bice at JSOnline reported earlier this week.

Randy Tylke, a former captain in the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Department, received a lump-sum payment of $641,157 when he retired earlier this year, according to documents obtained recently. That amount comes on top of his annual pension of $59,007.

“I did what I had to do,” said Tylke, who retired after 34 years with the county.

His lump-sum payment appears to be the third-largest single payout by the county since the backdrop provision went into effect more than seven years ago. A former assistant administrator at the Mental Health Complex collected $684,000 when he exited, and veteran county prosecutor Bob Donohoo received a little more than $650,000 in 2006.

Out of curiosity, I calculated how much money someone would have to invest each year for 34 years to amass a retirement portfolio of $641,000. Based on differing rates of return, the annual investments are approximately as follows.

Percent Return	Annual Investment
6%	$6,100
8%	$4,000
10%	$2,600

These annual amounts are unrealistic for several reasons.

1. Taxes are not considered and IRA's & 401(k)'s were not around in 1974.
2. Payments in early years would have been substantially lower (we made less money then) and higher payments would be needed later on to make up for it. That's the reason the IRS has "catch-up" rules for older taxpayers.
3. It is hard to invest successfully. Too many people take too little risk or too much risk. We are inconsistent in our investment strategies and often in the wrong investments at the wrong times. Sales loads and other fees also eat up returns.
4. The first 6 years of Mr. Tylke's work life were during the Ford and Carter administrations. The stock market was stagnant during that period meaning he would have had an even slower start.
   

So $2600 to $6100 is the magnitude of the amount of money that people outside of government would of had to invest for 34 years in order to begin to think about retiring. But if you put your time in (work was obviously optional) on the payroll of Milwaukee County, you get this lump sum as well as a fully funded pension and benefits.

In fact, Mr. Tylke's $59,000 pension would require the current amount shown below to be invested for various constant rates of return assuming Mr. Tylke lives for 25 years of retirement.

Percent Return	Present Value
4%	$923,000
6%	$754,000
8%	$630,000

These current values do not include any provision for cost of living adjustments, so the actual amount required to fund Mr. Tylke is substantially more.

The entire idea behind the backdrop scheme was that the Milwaukee County Pension System was "over-funded" in the late 1990's due to the runaway stock market. The prudent thing to do was to leave this money in the pension fund for future periods of slower market returns. Instead, the "excess" funds were disbursed to county workers who made no investment in the system and took no risk. The people taking the risk, Milwaukee County taxpayers, have been forced to make up for the excess payments made to Mr. Tylke and other county employees.

We all know how difficult investing for our retirements can be in these turbulent markets. In Milwaukee County, the pot of gold is just handed to employees. Twice.

Elsewhere, also from Bice.

What’s more, Tylke joked that he deserved his pension dollars after his time working for Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr.

Applying the standard of The One, Tylke is clearly a racist and a hater. He is eager to take the money from poor black taxpayers of Milwaukee County, he just isn't willing to work for a black man.

EXCLUSIVE: Yost offered $20 million to not manage Brewers

While Headless Blogger cannot independently confirm this, a source close to a group of broadcasters, sportswriters and fans says that the group is preparing to present Ned Yost with an offer of $2 million annually for 10 years if he agrees to not manage the Milwaukee Brewers.

Headless Blogger has also learned that unlike the $20 million deal being offered by the Green Bay Packers to estranged quarterback Brett Favre, the Yost deal will encourage him to manage another MLB team. The deal provides incentives for Yost to manage other NL Central teams, with a premium of up to double the base deal if Yost manages the rival Chicago Cubs.

In response to an inquiry on the matter, Brewers radio voice Bob Uecker (not my anonymous source) said "I was at Miller Park today and had a nice visit with Ned Yost. We discussed a number of topics not related to baseball, including Ned's long-term relationship with the Brewers. I consider our conversation to be confidential and am going to be respectful of Neddy and keep the details private." (I repeat, Uke is not my source.)

Yost apparently didn't think much of the offer, as his agent told reporters that his client wished to remain with the Brewers.

"Right now he's interested in staying in the Brewers' dugout," his agent said.

It was later reported that Yost provided comments to ESPN with a text messsage.

"There isn't a perfect solution to this, but these fans are at least trying," Yost told ESPN's Ed Werder via text message on Thursday night. "We know what they want and where I stand. This solution, although awkward and unsettling for most, may be the best in the end.''

Brewers owner Mark Attanasio and GM Doug Melvin were not available for comment.

Elsewhere, despite a summer of no 90 degree temperatures in Milwaukee, meteorologists explained that this is another sign of manmade global warming.

Meteorologists at the weather service say several factors could be keeping the temperature down, but part of it may be the ground's fault. So much rain fell in June that the soil is saturated, the forecasters say. When the temperature hits the 80s, that moisture evaporates relatively quickly and keeps the air from heating more.

Also, thunderstorms developed several times last month and cooled the air when the temperature threatened to break out of the upper 80s.

The heavy rains and thunderstorms were previously blamed as attributable to global warming. Hence, global warming causes local cooling.

Seriously, that I could not make up. Everything after the "Elsewhere" is from our local online mainstream meda source.

Elsewhere, hat tip to Andy Borowitz for my inspiration.

Dateline Madison

In an unprecedented midnight court session, the Wisconsin Supreme Court met overnight and ruled on the applicability of Wisconsin Statute 11.38(1). In a 4 to 3 ruling, the Court found that the statute, which forbids, absolutely, and without reserve, any corporate contributions to any candidate for office in the State of Wisconsin is not applicable to sitting Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices with last names beginning with the letters "B" or "C."

Asked to comment, Wisconsin Judicial Campaign Integrity Committee leader Thomas Hastings said, "Nothing to see here. Please move along."

Elsewhere, in a surprise move, WEAC, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, announced they will relocate their headquarters from Madison to Scottsdale, AZ. Citing Wisconsin's high taxes and poor business climate, a WEAC spokesperson also noted that the move will put the headquarters nearer to the majority of retired WEAC members and in an area with a pool of better educated workers. The spokesperson also noted that "the weather simply bites here, and we couldn't take it anymore."

H/T - Dad29

Hello, hello

Dang! This should be a movie.

Iraqi insurgents apply some major whupass to al queda.

BAGHDAD - Former Sunni insurgents asked the United States to stay away, and then ambushed members of Al Qaeda in Iraq, killing 18 in a battle that raged for hours north of Baghdad, an ex-insurgent leader and Iraqi police said yesterday.

The Islamic Army in Iraq sent advance word to Iraqi police requesting that US helicopters keep out of the area because its fighters had no uniforms and were indistinguishable from Al Qaeda, according to the police and a top Islamic Army leader known as Abu Ibrahim.

Abu Ibrahim said his fighters killed 18 Al Qaeda militants and captured 16 in the fight southeast of Samarra, a mostly Sunni city about 60 miles north of Baghdad.

"We found out that Al Qaeda intended to attack us, so we ambushed them at 3 p.m. on Friday," Abu Ibrahim said. He would not say whether any Islamic Army members were killed.

Elsewhere, asked to comment Senator Reid said "This is unfortunate, we had the chance to quit while we were behind."

Major nuclear accident

The Fort Calhoun nuke plant was getting their new main transformer (spare) from Austria. It was shipped half way around the world and they got it within less than 100 feet of where it was to be stored and it dropped. This thing weighs approximately 400 tons and cost $6,000,000.00. It had come in by barge to the plant's neighbor's facility that has a loading dock on the river and then transferred by rail for about a mile to the plant. Once it was at the plant it was loaded on the multi wheeled truck you see in the pictures and was being driven about a half mile to a site right outside their protected area to be stored until needed. The truck being used is a 12 axle self leveling hydraulic truck.

They got the transformer to about 100 feet of the storage location and a $2.00 O-ring failed on one of the hydraulic leveling rams and the trailer started tilting and when it got so far, the transformer broke all its hold down chains and came over on its side, made a rather loud thud and kicked up a lot of dust. The company that manufactured it came over and performed an inspection and deemed it unrepairable. The vendor is on the hook for it as part of the contract was to deliver it to the storage location and then the utility would take control of it. So the vendor is making another one and utility should get it next summer, all on the vendors nickel, and it is a LOT of nickels.

I'll give the Wisconsin DOT the benefit of the doubt on this one.


Elsewhere, Dr. Jack Kevorkian was briefly detained on suspicion of assisting in a suicide after being observed near corpse-like "60 Minutes" correspondent Mike Wallace.

Gross receipts tax

Gross receipts tax – does that really mean what it says?

Wow. This is beyond any sales or income tax and is NOT a tax on PROFITS as this article falsely claims. The proposed statute will require that this tax be paid by oil companies, not on profit, but on gross revenues.

To find out what this means in reality, I examined the 2006 Income Statement for ExxonMobil. While I did not have information on revenues and expenses for Wisconsin available, I was easily able to back things out on a percentage basis to approximate what the tax will mean to ExxonMobil for earnings in Wisconsin. I freely admit that this approach is overly simplistic, but the overall affect on profit should be similar.

2.5%.

Two-and-one-half-percent of anything does not sound like much. If Governor Jim Doyle proposed reducing the Wisconsin sales or income tax to 2.5%, I’d be all over it. But this is not a sales or income tax, it is a tax on the revenue of oil companies.

For corporations, this is significant because net income is always a small fraction of gross revenues. In the case of ExxonMobil that fraction was 10.18% for FY2006. Therefore the JimDoyleTax would be approximately 24.6% of ExxonMobil’s Net Income from Operations for Wisconsin. That is not 2.5% as most think about it and is absolutely confiscatory (think Hugo Chavez) when you consider that ExxonMobil will continue to pay federal and state income taxes in addition to the JimDoyleTax.

Put another way, ExxonMobil paid a total of 41.4% of their Net Income Before Taxes in Income Tax Expense in 2006. With the additional of the JimDoyleTax, ExxonMobil will pay 55.4% of every dollar of Net Income Before Taxes earned in Wisconsin as federal, state, and Wisconsin Gross Receipt taxes. This will reduce the overall profit for fuels sold in Wisconsin for ExxonMobil from 10.2% to 7.7%.

Is it worthwhile for ExxonMobil to sell gasoline in Wisconsin with a net margin of 7.7% when they can sell this commodity in other states and earn 10.2%? Certainly not. ExxonMobil and other oil companies will either pass through the JimDoyleTax to consumers, or market their product in areas where they will earn higher return.

Elsewhere, acknowledging the team’s success since the start of their “These Brewers need a nickname” contest, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel announced today that the team’s nickname for 2007 is “The Cubs.”

Fractured Fairy Tales, Part 1: Minimum mark-up

When gas was a buck, Big Oil was mandated to make at least 9.2 cents in gross profit per gallon and was happy.

Gas is now $3.50 and Big Oil is mandated to make 32.1 cents per gallon in gross profit in Wisconsin. Big Oil is very happy.

Would Big Oil be happy with 30 cents a gallon? Probably.

How about 25 cents? Maybe.

$0.20 per gallon? Possibly.

But we will never know. Because Big Tax mandates that Big Oil mark up the motor fuels it sells in Wisconsin by at least 9.18%.

The fact that Big Oil is making 32 cents per gallon upsets Big Tax. Big Tax says that 32 cents per gallon is an outrage, Big Oil does not deserve that much profit.

Big Tax has the ability to reduce the amount of profit that Big Oil is making in Wisconsin. Big Tax can simply repeal the State’s minimum mark-up law and Big Oil will sell it's fuels for less.

But Big Tax says, “I am the Gatekeeper. This cannot be done. Big Oil must reduce it’s profit without reducing it’s mark-up."

Big Tax intends to punish Big Oil for following the laws imposed by Big Tax. Fortunately for Big Oil, but unfortunately for you and me, the only entity that Big Tax answers to will declare that Big Tax cannot punish Big Oil. The punishment will be paid by you and me.

Meanwhile, Big Tax has dislocated a shoulder patting his own back for punishing Big Oil.


Elsewhere, African American Alderman Michael McGee claimed from his Milwaukee County jail cell that racial bias was behind his Federal prosecution for bribery and extortion. He said he was only following the spirit and example of Caucasian Governor Jim Doyle in finding ways to creatively enhance revenues.