Sharing Responsibility

Memorial Day is a tough one.

You can’t ignore it, because some things just can’t be – shouldn’t be – ignored. Like a thank-you note for a birthday present. Sending it is just right. Not doing so is just wrong.

And yet, what exactly does somebody like me say?

The closest I ever came to a war zone was the Atlantic Ocean, when I and my fellow trainees at Fort Jackson helped load vehicles onto ships, headed for Desert Shield. I’ve never heard a shot fired in anger, unless somebody was mad at the deer last November.

Raising four kids is no picnic, sure, but at least that job comes with regular meals and a soft bed. And no roadside bombs, except the kind neighborhood dogs leave in the yard.

Makes one feel sheepish, looking combat veterans in the eye. Unworthy. Why, exactly, have others gone, when I haven’t?

I know, Memorial Day isn’t about looking anyone in the eye. It’s about remembering those who died. I’m not confusing my days – Memorial and Veteran’s – I just have trouble separating thoughts for those who died in service from those who could have, because they willingly answered the call.

Twenty-two Wisconsin men and women have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since last Memorial Day. Seventy-five since May, 2003. Nationwide, the number is 3,467.

That doesn’t include the wounded: over 24,000 of them, according to one count. Some of them will deal with those wounds the rest of their lives. And that’s just the physical wounds.

It’s important that I know these things. It’s important that I pay attention, not just to the numbers, but to the names. Sgt. Scott Brown. Cpl. Kenneth Cross. Lance Cpl. Nicholas Anderson.

That’s why I appreciate online “casualty counters,” like this one, and this one, and this one. These websites are likely (sometimes obviously) liberal in nature – they oppose the war and hope to undermine public support. But they’re still conducting a service. I should never lose sight of the human costs, no matter how important I think the war is.

Because I share the responsibility.

I supported the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and still believe they were the right things to do. I support our continued presence in the Middle East, and I continue to believe that a long term presence there is not only desirable, but unavoidable.

I believe that, and I’ll support political leaders who believe it. Therefore, I share in the responsibility for whatever happens to the troops we send.

I could repudiate that support, of course. Could change my mind, like any number of politicians I could name. Don’t think I haven’t had second thoughts about the war: many of us have. But I’d still bear some of the responsibility, for helping send the troops over there in the first place.

There are some few of us Americans, of course, who bear none of this responsibility. Who opposed the war – even in Afghanistan – at the start, and still oppose it today.

They may feel differently about that: they do, after all, share in the benefit of our military actions, past and present. But that’s up to them.

They do share another responsibility, though: the opportunity cost. What didn’t happen, because we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq? What didn’t happen, because we shattered the Taliban and Al Queda; because we placed the fight in foreign lands, instead of our own?

But that’s all very hypothetical. It’s fine and dandy to wonder what might have happened if the U.S. hadn’t made some gesture of strength, and enticed the world’s terrorists into spending their money, resources, lives attacking armed and trained soldiers far from American soil.

In the end, all we know for sure is what has happened. And that is that thousands of U.S. military have given their health, their bodies, their lives – fighting terrorists and those who would support terrorism – on foreign land. Just as hundreds of thousands of other veterans gave the same fighting other threats in other lands.

We have a military for one reason: to protect us, so we can go home to our families at night, eat a hot dinner, and sleep in a soft bed.

Which we do, because they did.

Making Irrelevance Relevant: the Presidential Primaries

The old folks are getting uppity again.

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Reuters) - Florida lawmakers, hoping to give their state even more influence in U.S. politics, on Thursday moved up the state's presidential primary to the last Tuesday in January.

…Moving the primary, in which parties select their presidential candidates through open votes, would put Florida ahead of about a dozen states that have presidential primaries scheduled for February 5.

Florida is only the latest state to move their primary up. Others already have. More will likely follow. Because the earlier a state votes, the more influence that state has over who eventually runs for – and becomes – President.

Traditionally, the Iowa Caucuses have parsed the candidates first, followed by the New Hampshire primary. They whittle the field down for the rest of us, who get our primaries done, oh, sometime. When we get to it. Before mid-Summer.

The problem: by the time later primaries roll around, the issue is already decided. Later-voting states get less say, less choice. Their votes don’t count.

At least, that’s usually how it works. And, like Florida, states are jockeying for better position.

In the 2000 primary, only one state – Iowa – voted in January. Seven states voted in February, and 33 voted in March, including 17 on “Super Tuesday.”

By 2004, twenty-five states (including D.C.) voted in January and February. In 2008, that number will be at least 38, including 23 on the newly-dubbed “Super-Duper Tuesday,” February 5.

In 2000, five states were still voting in June. Their votes were meaningless. Next year, only one will be. Their votes will be meaningless.

We in Wisconsin, by the way, moved our primary to February for the 2004 primary – six weeks earlier than in 2000. It’s on February 19 next year, two weeks after Super-Duper Tuesday. Two weeks too late.

It’s not fair! said my 15-year-old daughter when I told her no, she couldn’t stay out until midnight. Life isn’t fair, came my ingeniously original reply. Just look at the American primary system!

Thus the rush to January. In another cycle, I bet, even April will be long-forgotten. By 2016, every state will vote by the end of February.

Sooner or later, some state or other is going to hold a primary in December, the year before the election. And there’s nothing, short of federal legislation or intra-party agreement, to stop them. Hell, there’s nothing to stop us from holding our 2012 primary next year, if that’s what we want.

It is with this in mind that I hereby declare my candidacy for the 2024 presidential election.

We’re already wailing and gnashing our teeth over how early elections get started these days, and there’s no logical endpoint. Come on, we’ve moved our primary date up two months already, and we’re still too far back to matter.

Move us up! Move us up! Fur-ther! Fur-ther!

Sooner or later, the major parties will get together and make a change. They’ll have to. Iowa and New Hampshire will have to give way to something else.

Tradition? Tough. Tell it to college football, Winthrop.

But…a change to what? A single, national primary? That would be interesting. On the one hand, marginal candidates who can at least make a small splash under today’s system – hoping for a big splash – might not be able to. Not if they have to mount a nationwide campaign.

On the other hand, we could end up with lots more candidates running local-to-regional campaigns.

Imagine Tommy Thompson running exclusively in the Midwest, Ron Paul in Texas, Dennis Kucinich in La-La Land. And at the same time, top-tier candidates trying to formulate The Strategy that will win it all.

That would be fun. But it would also make primaries meaningless: it’s likely that no single candidate could win a majority under those circumstances. We’d be back to the pre-1960s, when the conventions decided everything.

So, then, what? A nationwide runoff? Rotating regional primaries?

Coin flip? Rock-paper-scissors?

We’d better figure it out, because that’s where we’re heading. Sooner or later, the parties and/or the Feds will set an absolute limit on when primaries can start. Sooner or later, every single state will cram themselves into that week.

And that means…campaign commercials over Christmas. Yay!

Insults over Arguments

Some people are just jerks.

For some people, there’s no other explanation. They’re just jerks. Jerks occur in every walk of life, at every stage of life. Sometimes you can avoid them, sometimes you can’t. Most times, all you can do is accept it: there’s no point arguing with them. Just ignore them as much as you can.

That’s what I tell my kids. Some people are just jerks. Ignore them.

I’m not quite following my own advice today. Joel McNally is a jerk.

From his latest column:

Q: How can you tell if local politicians are simply trying to fan the flames of bigotry and hatred when they talk about cracking down on illegal immigrants?

A: Their lips are moving.

If you want to see some flames of bigotry and hatred, read the rest. McNally’s absolute disdain for “small-time” (meaning small-town) Wisconsin is palpable. He hates small town Wisconsin, the people who live there, and especially the values they live by.

Or, at least, the values we tend to generalize as “small-town values.” Even in small towns, there are vast differences among people.

Not that McNally cares. To him, they’re all ignorant hicks.

Oh, and all Republicans are racist.

Bucher, like many other conservative Republicans in the last election, believed inflaming racism and hatred against illegal Mexican immigrants would be a dandy way to win election.

The good news is they were wrong. Not only was Bucher defeated, but so were other right-wing Republicans running on anti-immigrant platforms all across the country…

This marks the first time I’ve read anybody – left wing or right wing – credit the immigration issue for the Democrats’ 2006 victories. And with good reason: on this issue, there’s not much difference between Republicans and Democrats.

According to Rasmussen Reports, a greater percentage of Republicans (56%) than Democrats (54%) think the U.S. should welcome any immigrant who is not a national security threat, criminal, or here just to live off our welfare system.

A minority of Republicans (46%, compared to 38% of Democrats) think we should try to remove all the illegal immigrants living in this country today.

And nearly two thirds of Democrats (64%, compared to 72% of Republicans) agree that “it makes no sense to debate new rules for immigration until we can control our borders and enforce the existing laws.”

Repeat: two out of three Democrats think we have to enforce our existing laws first, and reform our policies second.

That’s the very thing small-town Wisconsin is trying to do, according to McNally. The very thing that makes small-town Wisconsin a bunch of ignorant, incompetent, racist hicks.

Go figure.

Not only is McNally both repugnant and wrong, he’s intellectually lazy. His column makes no point outside of three main themes:

• Local government officials in Wisconsin are racists;
  
• Republicans are racists;
  
• Cops from such one-horse burgs as Green Bay and Waukesha are bumbling idiots.
  

From this, I can speculate – I emphasize speculate, because McNally never says – that McNally opposes immigration law. Not reform, but law. Enforcing the law, as these gap-toothed backwoods hillbillies are trying to do, equals racism in McNally’s book.

I’m no stranger to political rhetoric. I make use of hyperbole – sometimes insulting hyperbole – myself, on occasion. It’s fun to write, and fun to read. That’s important when you’re trying to affect a debate: people won’t spend their spare time plodding through boring writing. Unless people want to read what you write, it makes no difference how right you are.

So have a little fun, but try to have a larger point. Something substantive.

All McNally has is offensive hyperbole. No actual argument. No larger point. He has no suggestions. No compromises. No ideas. Only insults, and stale ones at that.

In fact, his column is exactly the sort of substance-free monkeyish poop-throwing that liberals like McNally – including McNally himself – spend so much time wailing over during election season.

McNally chooses to write this for one of, probably, several reasons. He’s throwing red meat to the ultra-liberal base. Or he’s too lazy/ignorant/arrogant to engage the issue itself. Or he can’t engage the issue, because his position is a loser.

Or, more likely, he’s just a jerk.

Is Conservatism Out of Gas?

The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WPRI) recently invited a range of writers, from former sock puppets to current political leaders, to weigh in on the question: is conservatism out of gas?

Sigh.

The short answer: of course not. Communism isn’t even dead, and look what’s happened to that.

What is it with us, that we ask questions like this? Not just us conservatives. Or even us Republicans. Us. Americans. Humans. Why must we obsess so over worst-case interpretations?

Remember when baseball was dying? Labor strife, the lockout, the World Series cancelled. Pro basketball’s most charismatic stars retired, to be replaced by the rise of thug culture. Hockey lost a whole season.

At one time or another, all three were declared dead, or at least attached to a severely intrusive life support machine.

Oh, and soccer. This is a reverse example. Every year, every event, every new happening in the soccer world is the one that’s going to finally bring soccer into the American…um…mainstream…and…uh…

…oh, sorry. Dozed off there for a second.

The point is, pundits may go on and on (and on), rip their clothes, gnash their teeth, until it sounds like the worst-case scenario may really happen. That’s what pundits do.

And they’re usually wrong. Hope springs eternal. Ask any Red Sox fan. Ask any Cubs fan. Heck, ask any Packers fan.

There’s always the next season. The next series. The next game. The next draft.

There’s always the next election, and it’s right around the corner. If we even have to wait that long. For all her faults, Annette Ziegler was the conservative candidate in April’s Supreme Court race. And she won.

In 1994, the electorate swept Republicans into office. The victory was total: from minority to large majorities in one fell swoop.

The question then was: had President Clinton become irrelevant?

It didn’t take too long to see that, well, no. He was still quite relevant. The Republican Revolution had succeeded. Conservatism was ascendant. But it wasn’t like we’d pitched the One Ring into a sea of volcanic lava.

The French have elected a president who likes America. Europe is coming around!

Right.

Getting our butts handed to us in the last election does not – repeat not – equal the death of conservatism, and simply asking the question smacks of make-work for those of us with nothing better to do than compose 700-ish words on the subject.

There’s an ebb and flow to politics. A seesaw effect. We – the American public – get tired of the people in power like we get tired of the latest fashions. Fashions which will, eventually, come into fashion again.

In power too long, incumbents spend more time defending old turf than conquering new. After enough time has passed – call it one and a half presidential terms – we’ve either achieved much, wonder why we haven’t achieved more, or (more likely) both.

The electorate is fickle. That’s a good thing. Or, as John McAdams puts it:

…possession of power in a democracy comes with a lot of baggage, and that baggage (like useless items in one’s attic) accumulates over time.

…It is now the Democrats who are accumulating the baggage.

That’s part of it. Charlie Sykes has another part:

The harsh reality is that liberals will always be more comfortable in government than conservatives. They are after all, the party of government, believing in its almost infinite capacity to solve our problems and run our lives…When conservatives became enamored of government power, they ceased to be conservatives, whatever their party label.

In order to enact conservative principles, conservatives have to be elected. But that presents conservatives with the temptation of power. Liberals, who already believe in that power, don’t face the same conundrum.

In that way, conservatism is more fragile than liberalism. Conservatism has to be tougher.

So what do we do? We don’t panic. We don’t despair. And we don’t waste our time wondering whether our philosophy is dead.

We also don’t stop working. Never mind what I said before: we can’t just sit around waiting for the inevitable Democrat implosion.

We need faces, and voices, and hands on the keyboards that will preach the conservative gospel. Happily. Excitedly. Not angrily. Never defensively. Do the work, win, and then do the work some more.

Eagerly approaching a challenge. Conservatives should be good at that. So let’s go.

Do Something!

It was just a couple of years ago: a gentleman called my office (a legislative office), demanding a law requiring anyone convicted of drunk driving to have a breathalyzer-activated car ignition. That way, if they’d been drinking, they wouldn’t be able to drive.

I explained that, sure, we could do that, but it wouldn’t work. There are other cars to be bought, or borrowed. There are other people to breathe into the breathalyzer. The sort of person who gets multiple DUIs will have few qualms about avoiding this law.

No matter, the gentleman said. Stop making excuses! He wanted us to Do Something, and whether it worked or not came in second.

It happens. Sometimes, public opinion runs strongly in one direction or another, on one issue or another, and the motivation to Do Something, regardless of what, runs just as strongly.

Which brings me – hope you can stand it – back to Campaign Finance Reform. I got this comment on last week’s column on this same subject:

You are absolutely correct that "$100,000 in the primary, $300,000 in the general" is a ridiculous amount of money. It should be ZERO and it should be full public funding of judicial campaigns …

…Is it a prelude to public funding of legislative races? I would sure hope so. If politicians are going to be beholden to their funders, I'd rather spend the $5 per taxpayer per year and have them beholden to us instead. It'd save us about $1300 per year in government giveaways to those who now fund the elections.

This person is unambivalent. Positive. Emphatic that Something Be Done and, in the great tradition of zealous insistence, unconcerned about whether That Something will work. Or, more importantly, unconcerned about what it would take to make it work.

Either that, or he hasn’t thought it through. Oddly, that would speak better of him.

The big problem with public funding of campaigns, as it exists today, is that it’s voluntary. Most serious candidates don’t use it, because they can raise more on their own. And the candidate who does use it has little recourse when his opponent drops a hundred grand in the last three days of the campaign.

Given this ineffectiveness, there’s only one thing to do: make public financing mandatory. Forbid political campaigns from raising and spending their own money.

This will make things worse. Money that would have gone to the campaigns will, instead, flow to outside groups, which will spend it themselves.

How do I know? Because it’s already happened. An unintended consequence of McCain/Feingold.

Given this loophole, there’s only one thing to do: restrict spending by outside groups.

But that brings up new questions: where do you draw the line, and why do you draw it there? Do we limit spending to $100,000? Suddenly, there will be ten times as many individual outside groups. Ten thousand dollars? There will be a hundred times as many groups.

Money is like water. It finds the path of least resistance. Go ahead, drop that mountain in its way. It may take a little longer, but the water will still get where it’s going.

Given this loophole, there’s only one thing to do: outlaw outside spending, like we outlawed non-public campaign spending.

But that brings up new questions: what, exactly, counts as “non-public campaign spending?”

I, an ordinary guy, am passionate about this election, and I’m willing to spend a little of my own money to see my side win. So I’m going to buy a roll of stamps, and I’m going to mail a hundred letters in support of my candidate.

Some of those letters will go to newspapers. Some to friends and colleagues. All are specific: we have to elect Candidate A, because he’s awesome, and/or because Candidate B steals candy from babies.

I’ve just spent fifty bucks, or thereabouts. Maybe I urge others to do the same. Or maybe I and a few friends pool our money to buy a newspaper ad. That does happen.

But not if the campaign finance reformers take their reforms to their logical – indeed their necessary – conclusion: shutting me up.

My commenter does have one point: money is corrupting. Campaign money can play on the baser desires of those who receive it.

His solution is, eventually, to tell individuals they cannot express their opinions, except while leaning over their own back fences.

Is There Any Problem our Kids Don't Cause?

Thinking of having kids? Thinking of having another kid?

Why? Do you hate the Earth that much?

Because just having that kid will make the world a less hospitable place. Less hospitable, because more humans are bad for the environment.

Each new UK citizen less means a lifetime carbon dioxide saving of nearly 750 tonnes, a climate impact equivalent to 620 return flights between London and New York, the Optimum Population Trust says in a new report.

Based on a “social cost” of carbon dioxide of $85 a tonne, the report estimates the climate cost of each new Briton over their lifetime at roughly £30,000. The lifetime emission costs of the extra 10 million people projected for the UK by 2074 would therefore be over £300 billion.

A 35-pence condom, which could avert that £30,000 cost from a single use, thus represents a “spectacular” potential return on investment – around nine million per cent.

This only makes sense. Each of us requires a certain amount of resources. That means consumption. Consumption means production. Production means byproducts. Byproducts are bad. They’re messy, ugly, and don’t play nice with the stuff that was here already.

At least, not in very large amounts.

But for each of us who does not exist, who will never exist, we collectively produce fewer byproducts.

Fewer people, less gas. It’s true at the annual family picnic, and it’s true globally.

It’s also a nice new way for Hollywood liberals to “offset” their carbon use. Just don’t have kids! For every kid you don’t have, you can take 310 round-trippers to Europe.

This will, I predict, become another aspect of the “Roe Effect.” People who really believe humans are a virus, unhealthy for children and flowers and the fairies who live in the trees, will be less likely to have kids. Those who don’t will be more likely to have kids. Thus, eventually, we’ll breed this craziness out.

Or that’s the theory.

We’ve covered this ground before. Remember this study?

Want to spend less at the pump? Lose some weight. That's the implication of a new study that says Americans are burning nearly 1 billion more gallons of gasoline each year than they did in 1960 because of their expanding waistlines. Simply put, more weight in the car means lower gas mileage.

Using recent gas prices of $2.20 a gallon, that translates to about $2.2 billion more spent on gas each year.

"The bottom line is that our hunger for food and our hunger for oil are not independent. There is a relationship between the two," said University of Illinois researcher Sheldon Jacobson, a study co-author.

The more you weigh, the harder your car has to work to move your bloated butt from place to place. That means you use more gas, spurt more poison into the air, and put more pressure on the energy industry to drill, strip, refine, transport, spill.

That’s bad for the pocketbook, and for Western (classical) liberalism because it pumps more money into terrorphilic Middle-Eastern dictatorships. But mostly, it’s bad for the environment.

Anorexia would seem to be the best policy, then: financially, militarily, and environmentally. Finally, something Hollywood lefties are doing right!

In fact, having a large family is a double hit to the environment: not only are you condemning the environment to that “750 tonnes” (whatever a “tonne” is) of carbon dioxide, you’re also increasing the weight your own vehicle is carrying.

I’ve got four kids. They weigh more than they would if I only had three. They’re growing. Getting heavier, and the law won’t allow me to stop feeding them. Trust me. I checked.

Every month, they get a little bigger. Every month, our van works a little harder, spends a little more fuel, produces incrementally more greenhouse gases, to get them from place to place.

And…wait, did I say van? That’s right. A minivan. Big. Heavy. Gets maybe 15 miles per gallon going downhill with a tailwind. If not for all those kids, we could buy one of those itty bitty hamster-driven hybrid thingies.

So lose some weight. Or, better, stop having kids. Be smart – don’t start!

Everyone follow that advice. Add eighty years. And all our problems are solved.

Forever Reforming Campaign Finance

They’re at it again. Campaign Finance Reform. It’s the Energizer Bunny.

A Senate committee passed several bills this week, purporting (they claim) to “clean up” Wisconsin elections.

For example, Senate Bill 171. Limit spending on Supreme Court races to $100,000 in the primary, $300,000 in the general.

For a major statewide race, that’s a ridiculous amount of money. No candidate will limit him/herself to that: you can't do anything in a statewide race for that much.

And even if they did abide by it, we can easily predict one consequence: more spending by outside groups. Money is like water. It finds a way.

And note: that’s not an unintended consequence. We know it’ll happen, because it’s happened before.

Hence, Senate Bill 77. Any group whose advertising identifies (or refers to) a candidate or party within 60 days of an election must report their contributors’ names.

Currently, they don’t have to do that. Not as long as they don’t ask us to vote for/against, or support/oppose a specific candidate/party.

As long as they’re engaging in “issue advocacy.” Voicing an opinion, which we all – theoretically, at least – have every right to do. Except, at election time, those issue ads are hard to distinguish from campaign commercials.

This makes some people hold their breath and stamp their feet:

Interest-group-sponsored issue ads are a sham, a dishonest sleight of hand that special interests engage in to evade disclosure requirements and legal limitations on campaign contributions. Under the false pretense of merely discussing issues, the ads unmistakably are intended to decide elections…

…Ordinary citizens are left an empty right to speak with no realistic hope of being heard in a money-saturated, corruption-stained, special-interest-dominated political arena.

No hope. No hope at all.

Nothing an ordinary citizen like me can do. Absolutely no way for me to communicate a message to others around the state.

Well, except for this. This blog. Which has yet to cost me a penny.

Or, I could join a group that promotes ideas I agree with. Add my voice to theirs; spread my opinions by joining with thousands of others who share them. That would cost me…what? A hundred bucks?

How long would it take for that hundred bucks to save me a hundred bucks, directly and indirectly, when we – a bunch of ordinary guys getting together to Make Our Voices Heard – help stop the Democrats’ tax increases?

Do you have to be a business to join WMC? Or can anybody sign up?

Now, of all the CFR proposals there are, requiring disclosure of contributors is among the least offensive.

After all, our system is based on knowledge. We get to know who’s handing out the checks, because that helps us decide whether our politicians are sincere or crooked. And I’m not afraid to let people know I contributed.

Although, come on, when it’s WRTL, or WEAC, or WMC, isn’t it kinda obvious who the contributors are? They’re pro-lifers, union members, businesspeople.

And what good would it do me to see contributors’ names? Will I recognize any of them? Not likely. More likely, it’ll be a meaningless list – I’ll know exactly zero about any of them, except that they contributed to Group X.

And if I already know what Group X stands for, then…

Of course, I’ll make sure and keep those lists, in case I ever run for office.

Ah. Maybe that’s why the politicians want them.

Okay, so it’s possible that some mega-wealthy person with a grudge could set up any number of “shadowy organizations” and funnel millions into them to promote/defeat an issue/candidate, for whatever good/evil reasons he/she had. Flood the election with enough money to completely overwhelm the other side.

That’s possible.

What should we do about it? I’m not sure.

We have the right to speak. This right should not be abridged.

That includes the right to spread our speech through mass media, if we so choose. Newsflash: it’s not easy to communicate with 2 million potential voters. Mailings, newspapers, TV and radio…voters aren’t always watching, or seeing, or noticing your efforts. Which means you have to do all those things multiple times, to increase the odds.

It can get expensive. Messy. Ugly. Sorry about that, but it’s true.

If Senate Democrats have their way, our hypothetical millionaire could spend his millions anonymously trashing an elected official, as long as he stopped 61 days before an election.

That’ll be next on the list of reforms. Like I said, CFR never stops.

Charge of the Budget Brigade

It’s official: taxes in Wisconsin are high, and legislative Democrats are anxious.

Anxious to convince us otherwise, and anxious to raise them higher. Which is proving to be a problem. For them.

Which we can certainly understand. Hey, would you want to be the one defending Governor Doyle’s budget, complete with $1.75 billion in tax and fee increases? Three hundred and ten dollars per man, woman, and child in Wisconsin?

I wouldn’t.

Not to mention, the Tax Foundation has gone ahead and calculated Tax Freedom Day for us again, and the news is bad.

If we did nothing but pay taxes until the total state, local, and national tax bills were paid, it would’ve taken us until May 2 to settle up. For 122 days, every penny we earned went to feed the government.

Now, finally, we can eat. And please note: that doesn’t include the fees.

Nationally, taxes added up to 32.7% of all income earned. In Wisconsin, it’s 33.3%. Exactly one dollar out of every three. Not fees: taxes!

Given all this, one might think that the Democrats’ budget proposal, with its $1.75 billion in tax and fee increases and its $2 billion in potential property tax increases and its $3 billion in borrowing isn’t going down all too well around the state.

If so, one is thinking correctly. But Democrats are still defending it. They have to. It’s theirs.

Pickett’s Charge. Gallipolli. That doomed final battle scene in The Last Samurai.

Charge those guns! Okay, maybe not that heroic, but you get the idea.

In a press release, Sen. Russ Decker (D-Weston) says Tax Freedom Day is based on fuzzy math:

…the average figure gets skewed by higher-income taxpayers. If you have five families and four of them make $50,000 a year while paying $2,500 a year in income taxes, they are paying about 5 percent of their income in taxes. If one family out of the five makes $400,000 a year and pays $80,000 in taxes, they pay about 20 percent of their income in taxes. Under the methods used by The Tax Foundation, they would that everyone in this group pays 15 percent of their income in taxes.

“The Tax Foundation wildly overestimates what most people are paying in taxes in order to push their agenda of ending progressive taxation,” said Decker.

But it’s not an overestimation. It’s an average. An aggregate. A measure of just how big and hungry our government is.

Still, Decker has one point: about half of us don’t pay federal income taxes. Well, fine. Let’s just include tax filers – people who actually do have to pay. That makes the Democrats’ tax increase is $632 per, and that doesn’t include property taxes.

Senator Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) had another take:

…Wisconsin businesses pay 35% of all state taxes collected. That’s well under the national average of 40% and means homeowners and farmers in Wisconsin are making up the nearly $800 million difference.

…

“This is simply a matter of fairness. Those who can well afford to pay aren’t, while those who are working the hardest just to make ends meet are left stuck with the tab. If we level the playing field and ease the tax burden big corporations have shoved onto the backs of Wisconsin’s working families, tax freedom day will come much sooner for those who really deserve the break.”

Of course, just having someone else pay the taxes won’t change the results.

And of course, Hansen knows that. Hansen also knows that, if business taxes go up, it’s “Wisconsin’s working families” who will pay them. Gross income minus expenses equals profit, and if profit is a negative, then the business goes bye-bye. So higher taxes mean higher prices. Ka-ching.

Hansen, like Decker, is doing his best to play the game with a lousy hand of cards. Their budget is bloated, heavy on taking more from “Wisconsin’s working families,” light on fiscal restraint. They know it, but they have to defend it.

So they’re pulling out the chestnuts. Using hyperbole to prop up their side, and to score points with the envious: a mainstay Democrat constituency.

It happens sometimes. This time, I’m just glad I’m not in their shoes.

Democrats Want to Stay in Iraq

Democrats want out of Iraq. Or so they say.

Their actions seem to say otherwise.

Earlier today, Congressional Democrats sent the President a bill requiring our withdrawal from Iraq. The withdrawal must begin on either July 1 or October 1, and be completed six months later, on a day the world’s terrorism-minded will forevermore call: “Thank Allah for American Weakness Day.”

President Bush has already vetoed the bill, just as he promised to do, because giving our enemies a date certain like that is the surest possible way to leave Iraq to a fate any compassionate human being would do anything to avoid.

Unless you’re a Western liberal opposing a Republican president, that is.

Too bad, because the Bush-hating Left really likes the planned withdrawal scenario. Bush is unpopular already because of the war. They want history to remember him for losing the war, too.

That’s what this is really all about. Bush hatred. Anti-Republicanism. Winning the political fight. There’s not a shred of actual integrity in it.

Or, maybe there is. We’ll come back to that later.

If they – Democrats, liberals – really want out of Iraq, if they really believe it’s the right thing to do, if they really believe we’re asking somebody to be the last man to die for a lie…then they’re going about this in entirely the wrong way. They’re deliberately choosing a strategy that will make the White House dig in its heels.

Doing what they’re doing, they won’t get what they want. And they know it.

Ergo, I conclude that Democrats want to stay in Iraq.

And why not? Iraq was a very positive issue for Democrat candidates in 2006. There’s little reason right now to believe it will be otherwise in 2008.

They don’t want to leave. They want the issue to continue. They want to force Bush and Republicans to defend an unpopular war.

Placing political gain over philosophical belief. That’s more important to them than actually ending the war.

But wait: if they oppose the war, what else should they do? What else could they do?

Well, they could try giving Republicans some political cover. Tout our successes in Iraq, claim their own dedication to helping Iraq survive and grow.

In other words, help the President declare victory.

There are Republicans who would leap at a chance like that. If Democrats can help enough Republican members of Congress abandon the war without looking like they’re abandoning the war, then abandon the war we shall!

But such a strategy of cooperation, bipartisanship, and snuggling up to the President means giving up a few things. It means giving up the political advantage they currently hold on the Iraq issue.

It means giving up some of their status as standalone political leaders and sharing the limelight with the President.

And it means giving up whatever fawning support they’re getting from the most flea-bitten of today’s wannabe-hippie Bush Lied! peace-at-all-costs leftroots. And, as we all know, the same leftroots that feeds you today will eat you tomorrow, should you happen to look their way with anything other than Peace, Love, and Dope in your heart.

Still, it might just work. Come on, Congressional Democrats, can’t you swallow your pride for the sake of peace? Would you really ask someone to be the last to die for a lie? Just to protect your own political advantage?

Are you really that cynical?

Maybe. Or…perhaps there’s another answer. Maybe congressional Democrats don’t really believe that Iraq is an unwinnable (already lost!) quagmire, based on lies and greed, unimportant in the global struggle against terrorism.

Maybe they don’t believe it. Maybe they really do know how important this is – more important, even, than humiliating President Bush and making sure history remembers him that way.

Maybe they’re publicly playing to their base, while ensuring that what has to happen – that the war can continue – does happen.

Clever.

I dunno. That credits them with an awful lot of sense. But that does seem to be what’s happening.

The alternative is that they’re deliberately pursuing a strategy, which they know will achieve the opposite of what they want, solely because it’s better for them politically.

And as partisan as I am, I hate to believe that.