Airlines Will Cancel Flights Rather Than Risk Fines

Yup.

Passengers may soon be seeing more cancellations on airport departure boards.

Several airlines, including Fort Worth-based American and Houston-based Continental, say they will cancel flights rather than risk paying stiff penalties for delaying passengers on the runway.

Continental’s CEO told investors Tuesday that the airline will opt to cancel flights rather than chance being fined.

Aviation consultant Denny Kelly expects other airlines to follow suit.

“I think all of them will cancel flights,” he said. “They’ll do it partially because they think they are going to punish passengers, and if they punish them, someone will get this legislation removed.”

Under new federal guidelines that take effect next month, airlines can be fined up to $27,500 per passenger if a plane is stuck on the tarmac for longer than three hours.

Gee, who could have predicted this?

Delays throughout the airport are several hours long.  The airlines don’t want to risk anyone staying out there too long, so they just cancel the flights

Sexual Predator Bill Up for Hearing Tomorrow

This isn’t cool.

Suburban Milwaukee leaders are mobilizing against a bill that would outlaw local ordinances that restrict where sex offenders can live.

A hearing on Assembly Bill 759 is set for Thursday before the state Assembly Committee on Corrections and the Courts.

Franklin Ald. Steve Olson said Tuesday that elected officials from Franklin, Greenfield, Cudahy and possibly other suburbs plan to attend the hearing.

Olson said he thinks the bill would result in Milwaukee sex offenders being released from prison and allowed to live in the suburbs.

“It’s an effort by some Milwaukee legislators to again pass something quickly, when nobody sees it, and put their problems on to other communities,” Olson said.

“Why should we accept Milwaukee’s, why should Milwaukee accept Franklin’s (sex offenders)?” he said. “It’s a matter of simple logic and fairness - take your own back.”

Franklin is among municipalities that restrict sex offenders from living in certain areas, such as a prescribed distance from schools.

The bill would prevent those municipalities from enforcing such ordinances and would prohibit any more such ordinances from being enacted.

Once again we have the state wanting to impose a blanket rule instead of letting different municipalities manage these things according to their own values.  It’s disappointing to see so many Republicans co-sponsoring this.  Local control, folks… dig it. 

Different Format for March 22nd School Board Meeting

Hmmmm…. where have I seen something like this before?

The third presentation of the 2010-11 proposed budget recommendations will be at the March 22 board meeting. District administrators and school board members have indicated they would like to see a large audience.

  The purpose of the School Board meeting, according to Ted Neitzke,, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, is to increase the community’s awareness of the school district’s budget — past, present and future — and to collect community feedback.

  Because the focus of the meeting is on collecting feedback, the format will be different than a typical board meeting, Neitzke said.

  The evening will begin with a budget presentation by Neitzke. After the presentation, community members will be split into large groups and put into classrooms. The size of the groups, Neitzke said, would depend upon attendance.

  If 300 people attended the meeting, for example, they would be divided into groups of 30 in 10 classrooms.

  Within the classrooms, people will be further divided into groups of five to six people Neitzke said.

  The small “focus” groups would be asked to provide feedback on a number of budget related issues. Feedback would then be collected by a facilitator and brought back to the school board.

  “The changed format will give the most people the most opportunities to have their voices heard,” Neitzke said. “Our district is very unique. There is no other school board in the state that is going out this early to ensure that the community understands the budget.”

Ah yes, I remember now.  It’s a variation of the Delphi Technique used by liberal activists for decades to build faux consensus.  I don’t like this format for a variety of reasons.  First, there is the opening for manipulation of the results.  If all of the groups are divided up and the administrator comes back and says “the majority did not want to cut X from the budget,” who can dispute it?  If your group was OK with cutting X, how do you know what the other groups thought about it?  How can you verify the administrator’s statement?  You can’t. 

Second, it is a process designed to exclude all but the most committed.  If it were a regular board meeting, then I could go and listen to the budget presentation, perhaps say my piece, and then leave if I have other commitments.  This format forces all attendees to commit to the evening.  That means that the passively interested won’t bother to attend because they don’t want to commit to the time and the folks with the most to lose or gain will dominate the process.  Who will be the most likely to take an entire evening to attend?  Take a guess. 

Third, this process filters the ideas that will boil up for the board to hear, and the filter will be applied by the school administration.  For example, if someone in Group #6 has a great idea that nobody else thought of, the board may never hear it because it didn’t develop into a “theme.”  Or if a theme develops of people saying “cut 10% of administration” and the administration considers that “unworkable,” then the input may be excluded from the final results. 

This method is a tried and true method to give the facilitators maximum control over the flow of information.  How they use that control should be of great concern to the citizens in this school district.

One more thing… the Superintendent is up for review this month.  Odds are about 20,000 to 1 that she will receive a raise. 

Keep tabs on health care

My column for the Daily News is online.  It’s called, “Keep tabs on health care.”  Here’s a portion:

Here’s where we are: The House Democrats won’t pass the Senate version of the bill because they don’t trust the Senate Democrats to pass a fix for it. The Senate Democrats won’t pass the fix because they don’t trust the House Democrats to pass the Senate version. It’s also problematic for the Senate Democrats to pass a fix for a bill that hasn’t been passed into law yet. President Obama is promising liberal House Democrats that they can vote for the Senate bill without a public option and they’ll “improve” it later even though the president has no ability to keep that promise with the current makeup of the Senate. A handful of pro-life House Democrats are refusing to pass the Senate version because it doesn’t include a ban on funding abortions. And all of the Democrats are refusing to scrap both bills and start over because they are afraid of being seen as unable to govern.

  Whew, got all that? There are some lessons here.

  First, the whole reason the Democrats are having so much trouble passing a bill is because it’s a steaming pile of, er, dreadful legislation that the public strongly opposes. It’s an election year. Many Democrats are looking at the polls and would like to remain in office after the election despite their leadership’s desire to sacrifice them on the altar of health care reform. Perhaps Democrats should learn a lesson about trying to shove through legislation that their constituents oppose.

  Second, huge pieces of legislation that dramatically change our relationship with government should be difficult to pass. Such gridlock is the result of the genius of our Founding Fathers. They built us a system where competing interests must align before major changes can happen. Such alignment hasn’t happened yet in the health care debate, which is a warning that it shouldn’t pass.

  Third, just look at how little trust there is between all of these politicians and remember that they know each other better than we know them. If they don’t trust each other, why should we trust them with our health care?

Van Hollen Charges Five With Felony Vote Fraud

Good for the AG.

Five Wisconsin residents have been charged with criminal counts of voter fraud in the November 2008 general election, state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced today.

Two of those charged - Maria Miles, 36, of Milwaukee, and Kevin Clancy, 26, of Racine - worked for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the embattled community organizing group.

“The complaint alleges that Miles and Clancy submitted multiple voter registration applications for the same individuals, and also were part of a scheme in which they and other (special registration deputies)  registered each other to vote multiple times in order to meet voter registration quotas imposed by ACORN,” the Van Hollen release says.

Both were charged with one felony count.

Woman Crashes Car While Shaving

I agree with the Spring City Chronicle.... “There is a cornucopia, nay, a veritable plethora, of things wrong with the next two sentences:”

Megan Mariah Barnes, 37, crashed into another vehicle on Cudjoe Key after giving her ex-husband the wheel as she shaved her private parts.

Barnes was driving to meet her boyfriend in Key West and told authorities she wanted to be “ready for the visit,” WJZ.com reported.

Of course, there’s this too:

Barnes should not have been driving in the first place. The day before the accident, she had been convicted and sentenced to nine months of probation for DUI and driving with a suspended license.

Her license was revoked for five years and she was ordered to get her car impounded.

Milwaukee Police Delayed Investigating Voter Fraud

Wow.  Here’s a stunning, if not too surprising, report from Dan Bice in the MJS.

Milwaukee police officers sat on their hands for months last year instead of investigating possible voter fraud cases from the 2008 general election.

It’s an incredible claim, but it’s coming from a credible source:

Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, the Milwaukee County prosecutor responsible for overseeing campaign and election issues.

“Honestly, the Milwaukee Police Department largely ignored your double voter (and other) referrals received in January 2009 for the first six months of 2009,” Landgraf wrote in an e-mail to a city elections official on Jan. 26.

Speaking with unguarded candor, the veteran prosecutor said in his note that MPD’s tardy response had a major impact. The cases involve voters who may have cast more than one ballot, felons who may have voted illegally and other cases of possible election fraud.

“Sadly, several probable cases of genuine voter fraud were harmed by that delay,” Landgraf wrote in an e-mail obtained through an open records request.

The assistant district attorney was even more pessimistic about the investigation of more than 500 individuals who registered to vote on election day but whose addresses could not be confirmed later by postcard.

“I do not expect them to ever get to the Address Cards,” he said of the Milwaukee cops.

On Friday, Landgraf declined to provide specifics, referring questions to his boss, District Attorney John Chisholm.

Interestingly, Chisholm wouldn’t elaborate on his assistant’s concerns.

“I’ll let the e-mail speak for itself,” he said while praising Landgraf’s experience and knowledge.

No Lawyers for Animals

Well, I suppose there is a little sanity out there.

The result was emphatic: Swiss voters don’t think abused animals need to have their own lawyers.

It’s a proposal that would never even come near a referendum in other countries, but the measure’s defeat Sunday disappointed animal rights advocates, who say Switzerland’s elaborate animal welfare laws aren’t being enforced.

Comparing California and Texas

Michael Barone makes some good comparisons.  Which one of these states is Wisconsin more like?

No one would include Perry on a list of serious presidential candidates, including himself, even in the flush of victory. But in his 10 years as governor, the longest in the state’s history, Texas has been teaching some lessons to which the rest of the nation should pay heed.

They are lessons that are particularly vivid when you contrast Texas, the nation’s second most populous state, with the most populous, California. Both were once Mexican territory, secured for the United States in the 1840s. Both have grown prodigiously over the past half-century. Both have populations that today are about one-third Hispanic.

But they differ vividly in public policy and in their economic progress—or lack of it—over the last decade. California has gone in for big government in a big way. Democrats hold big margins in the legislature largely because affluent voters in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area favor their liberal positions on cultural issues.

Those Democratic majorities have obediently done the bidding of public employee unions to the point that state government faces huge budget deficits. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s attempt to reduce the power of the Democratic-union combine with referenda was defeated in 2005 when public employee unions poured $100 million—all originally extracted from taxpayers—into effective TV ads.

Californians have responded by leaving the state. From 2000 to 2009, the Census Bureau estimates, there has been a domestic outflow of 1,509,000 people from California—almost as many as the number of immigrants coming in. Population growth has not been above the national average and, for the first time in history, it appears that California will gain no House seats or electoral votes from the reapportionment following the 2010 census.

Texas is a different story. Texas has low taxes—and no state income taxes—and a much smaller government. Its legislature meets for only 90 days every two years, compared with California’s year-round legislature. Its fiscal condition is sound. Public employee unions are weak or nonexistent.

But Texas seems to be delivering superior services. Its teachers are paid less than California’s. But its test scores—and with a demographically similar school population—are higher. California’s once fabled freeways are crumbling and crowded. Texas has built gleaming new highways in metro Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

In the meantime, Texas’ economy has been booming. Unemployment rates have been below the national average for more than a decade, as companies small and large generate new jobs.

And Americans have been voting for Texas with their feet. From 2000 to 2009, some 848,000 people moved from other parts of the United States to Texas, about the same number as moved in from abroad. That inflow has continued in 2008-09, in which 143,000 Americans moved into Texas, more than double the number in any other state, at the same time as 98,000 were moving out of California. Texas is on the way to gain four additional House seats and electoral votes in the 2010 reapportionment.

Lost Jewish Tribe In Zimbabwe

Cool.

In many ways, the Lemba tribe of Zimbabwe and South Africa are just like their neighbours.

But in other ways their customs are remarkably similar to Jewish ones.

They do not eat pork, they practise male circumcision, they ritually slaughter their animals, some of their men wear skull caps and they put the Star of David on their gravestones.

Their oral traditions claim that their ancestors were Jews who fled the Holy Land about 2,500 years ago.

It may sound like another myth of a lost tribe of Israel, but British scientists have carried out DNA tests which confirm their Semitic origin.

These tests back up the group’s belief that a group of perhaps seven men married African women and settled on the continent. The Lemba, who number perhaps 80,000, live in central Zimbabwe and the north of South Africa.

Judgment In Favor of Open Carry

Judgment.

IT IS ORDERED that judgment in the amount of $10,000.00, inclusive of attorney’s fees and costs, is entered in favor of plaintiffs, Wisconsin Carry, Inc., and Frank Hannan Rock and against defendants, City of Racine, Sgt. Nethery, and R. Prince, as to all claims of said plaintiffs, state and federal, respecting this action.

Good news that the courts are backing legally protected actions.  Here’s the background. 

Iceland Votes to Not Pay Debt

Iceland is full of welshers. 

Iceland’s voters overwhelmingly rejected a deal to pay billions of dollars it owes to the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, the Foreign Ministry said Sunday.

With around 90 percent of votes counted, just over 93 percent said no and just under 2 percent said yes. Not enough votes remain to be counted to change the result. Some 62.5 percent of Iceland’s roughly 200,000 register voters cast ballots, the ministry said.

The referendum was on a law about repaying the Netherlands and UK, which helped savers in their own countries who lost money in a failed Icelandic Internet bank.

The British and Dutch governments came up with more than $5 billion for bailing out people who lost money in Icesave—an online retail bank branch of Landsbanki. That Icelandic bank failed in October 2008, along with two other banks in the country.

Under a European Union directive, Iceland now owes compensation to Britain and the Netherlands. The Icelandic government has said it will honor its international obligations.

Iceland’s parliament passed a bill authorizing a state guarantee for repayment of the funds, but President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson declined to sign it in January. He cited public disapproval, and in particular, an Internet petition signed by up to one-quarter of the electorate, as a reason for not signing the bill. He said there needed to be a national consensus in addressing the issue.

That prompted Saturday’s national referendum on the law.

Candidate Forum

Attend!

Eagle Forum of Wisconsin-Washington County will host a forum for candidates for Washington County Supervisors and District II Court of Appeals Judge, March 31, at 6:30 p.m.

The event will be held at the City Council Chambers, 1115 S. Main Street, West Bend.

The format will include an introductory statement by each candidate. Candidates will take turns answering questions and will be allowed conclusion time.

The moderator will be Randy Melchert, former state assembly candidate and political analyst.

Mounting Debt

Gross fiscal mismanagement. 

President Barack Obama’s budget proposal would generate bigger deficits than advertised every year of the next decade, with the shortfalls totaling $1.2 trillion more than the administration estimated, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The nonpartisan agency said today the deficit will remain above 4 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product for the foreseeable future while the publicly held debt will zoom to $20.3 trillion, amounting to 90 percent of GDP by 2020. By then, interest payments on the debt will have quadrupled to more than $900 billion annually, the report said.

Deficits between 2011 and 2020 would total $9.76 trillion, the CBO said.

Economists generally consider deficits topping 3 percent of GDP to be unsustainable because that means government debt is growing faster than the ability to pay back the money.

This administration makes the folks at Enron and AIG look like pikers. 

Restroom Access Act

Seriously?

People in need of speedy relief would get it under the Restroom Access Act, passed this week by the Assembly.

Those with severe bowel disorders could get state-approved cards that would let them use any retailer’s bathroom, even if it’s just for employees, under the legislation. The bill, approved Thursday on a voice vote, now goes to the Senate.

Common sense would dictate that if I’m a retailer and there’s a customer about to crap his pants in my store, I’d let him use the employee bathroom.  This strikes me as a solution in search of a problem.