Democrat Governor Expands Concealed Carry in State

Good for him.

Governor Bill Richardson today signed a bill that removes the ban on concealed carry licensees from bringing their weapons into New Mexico restaurants with beer and wine licenses. However, Governor Richardson is ordering additional safeguards to address public safety concerns surrounding the bill.

Wyoming Asserts Rights

Awesome.

Gov. Dave Freudenthal on Thursday signed into law a bill that seeks to exempt firearms made in Wyoming and used exclusively in the state from federal regulations, making the state the latest to try to undermine federal authority on gun regulation.

Montana, Tennessee and Utah have already passed similar legislation to exempt firearms made in their states from federal regulations and Idaho and Alaska have been considering it.

A lawsuit over the issue is brewing in Montana, where gun advocates are arguing that the state should decide which rules, if any, should control the sale and purchase of guns made and used in the state.

[...]

The bill states that any federal official who tries to enforce federal regulations on guns made in Wyoming and sold within the state would be guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to a jail time and fines.

Freudenthal states in his letter that any attempt to charge federal officials would be removed to federal court, where they would likely be found to be immune to state charges.

The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has informed gun dealers in Montana and Tennessee that, in the agency’s opinion, the new state laws don’t relieve gun dealers of their responsibility to follow federal firearms laws and regulations in gun sales, regardless of where the guns were made.

The Department of Justice, however, filed a brief in U.S. District Court in Montana early this year arguing that federal control of guns is a “valid exercise of Congress’ commerce power under the Constitution.”

The goal of the states’ measures are to circumvent federal authority over interstate commerce, the legal basis for most gun regulation in the U.S.

Public Service Announcement

Starts tonight on HBO.

Pi Day

Time to celebrate the ratio of your circumference to your diameter!

Cashing In the IOUs

The bill is coming due. 

For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits — billions more each year.

Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.

Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs — in the form of Treasury bonds — which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg’s municipal offices.

Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn’t be worse. The government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year, followed by trillion dollar deficits for years to come.

Caption Contest

Source.

Bad Reporting

This report is so unprofessional that it makes me cringe.

Republicans and conservative tea party members railed against health care reform, global warming legislation and government spending at a convention Saturday that attracted about 2,000 people.

The meeting, organized by the conservative group Americans for Prosperity and dubbed an unofficial tea party convention, brought together numerous Republican officeholders, party leaders and candidates in addition to national speakers like “Joe the Plumber” and Michael Reagan, the son of former President Ronald Reagan.

[...]

The meeting came roughly a year after the first tea party rallies in the state and nationwide. Wisconsin tea party organizers say they have no interest in starting a third political party and instead want to work closely with Republicans.

The reporter doesn’t even bother to share the actual name of the gathering.  For the record, it’s the Defending the American Dream summit.  Also, although some may have dubbed it an “unofficial tea party convention,” it is the third annual such event in Wisconsin.  For those of you paying attention, that means that it was happening well before the tea parties started. 

Pathetic reporting.  On the bright side, 2,000 folks turning out (assuming the number is somewhat accurate) is pretty dang good. 

Wisconsin Debates Increasing Subsidies for Burials

Huh.

The Legislature’s budget committee is considering whether to expand a program that helps pay the funeral and burial expenses of low-income Wisconsin residents.

The Joint Finance Committee on Tuesday is expected to vote on a bill that would allow the program to pay for funerals and burials that cost up to $4,500 instead of the current $3,500.

The maximum funding for each claim would remain at $1,500. But the Department of Health Services says the expanded eligibility might increase claims by 15 percent, or by 500 per year.

The department estimates the bill might increase the program’s costs by $538,000 per year. It estimates the program cost roughly $7.8 million in 2009.

If you run the math, that means that the taxpayers subsidized roughly 5,200 funerals in 2009.  I couldn’t find death statistics for 2009, but there were 46,526 deaths in Wisconsin in 2008.  So the taxpayers are subsidizing roughly 11% of the funerals in Wisconsin.  The state poverty rate is at about 10.7%.  Interesting, no?

Breaking the Deals

Prickly situation.

“We’re going to do what we have to do to get a bill out of the House and Senate,” said James Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. As for Obama’s wish list of deletions: “We’ll certainly keep it in mind as we pull together a final bill.”

That tepid salute underscores the prickliness with which many senators have greeted what they consider Obama’s meddling in their business and raises questions about how successful the president will be in erasing the special projects from final legislation.

It also highlights a spat between a White House and Senate, dominated by the same party, that the president has ignited just as he needs to garner support to finally push his No. 1 legislative goal to passage over monolithic Republican opposition and nervous Democrats.

Obama’s proposal to eliminate state-specific items comes with polls finding heightened public opposition to backroom political deals. Republicans have been happy to fan that discontent. Many Democrats, particularly House moderates facing tight re-election battles this fall, are eager to dissociate themselves from such spending.

The president wants votes from House Democrats “who were deeply offended by those provisions in the Senate bill,” said Sheryl Skolnick, who analyzes federal health legislation for CRT Capital Group of Stamford, Conn. “Clearly the math was, ‘I gain more in the House by taking out those provisions than I lose in the Senate.’”

Obama has railed against the “ugly process” of cutting special deals, but the president and his top advisers were prime players in negotiations on the agreements to win votes and push the legislation forward.

Here’s the problem for Reid… he cut those deals to get the legislation passed.  Now, even if they reverse the deals, those senators can’t take their votes back and are hung out to dry.  If that happens, Reid will have zero credibility to make any deals in the future to get anything done.  Once again, Obama is wanting everyone else to take the pain and sacrifices for his benefit. 

Costly Census

It’s like they spend money just because they can.  Wait, it’s not “like” that.  That’s what it is. 

This week West Benders received a notification letter from the U.S. Department of Commerce. The letter read: “About one week from now, you will receive a 2010 Census form in the mail. When you receive your form, please fill it out and mail it promptly. Your response is important.”

  The letter is signed by Robert M. Groves, director of the U.S. Census Bureau.

  U.S. Census Bureau paid for the pre-sorted, firstclass mail postage and fees. The bulk-mailing supervisor at the West Bend Post Office said the cost was about 35 cents per letter. Regular postage is 44 cents.

  Don Zimmer is the local census office manager in Oshkosh. He said the Census Bureau mailed 123 million letters to households nationwide. At 35 cents postage, that’s about $43 million. The population in West Bend is 30,400.

  “We used global positioning systems to get local addresses and we sent out the form letter,” said Zimmer. “So as many residence we could identify that were occupied, those were the letters that went to people. Again they weren’t addressed to people but to housing units.”

  State Sen. Glenn Grothman of West Bend said this one more example of wasteful spending.

  “This just shows, one more time, how completely oblivious too many government officials are to spending other people’s money,” he said. “I would guess the advance letter will result in zero more people filling out their form.”

Suicide Pact?

Perhaps.

November Looking Good for Republicans in Wisconsin

Interesting.

The results show that 51% of likely voters favored Thompson and 39% favored Feingold. Nine percent of the likely voters were undecided.

In a matchup between Feingold and Republican Madison developer Terrence Wall, Feingold leads 47% to 32%.

The poll was directed by political scientist Ken Goldstein of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The survey of 600 randomly selected likely voters in Wisconsin was conducted from March 7-9 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

In the governor’s race, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker leads Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett 36% to 32%.The margin of error of the poll makes a Barrett-Walker race virtually even.

The gap between Walker and Republican home builder and former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann is wider, with Walker leading Neumann by 19 percentage points (46% to 27%.)

Walker’s lead is aided by his large advantage in the Milwaukee media market, where nearly 7 in 10 likely voters said they support Walker over Neumann. In the rest of the state, Neumann held a slight edge over Walker.

In a head-to-head race between Barrett and Neumann, the results show that it’s a dead heat. Barrett and Neumann are tied at 34%.

Schooled

Professional historian Victor Davis Hanson schools Tom Hanks. 

Much has been written of the recent Tom Hanks remarks to Douglas Brinkley in a Time magazine interview about his upcoming HBO series on World War II in the Pacific. Here is the explosive excerpt that is making the rounds today.

“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”

Hanks may not have been quoted correctly; and his remarks may have been impromptu and poorly expressed; and we should give due consideration to the tremendous support Hanks has given in the past both to veterans and to commemoration of World War II; and his new HBO series could well be a fine bookend to Band of Brothers.  All that said, Hanks’ comments were sadly infantile pop philosophizing offered by, well,  an ignoramus.

Holder Withheld Legal Briefs from Senate

Seems like a contempt of Congress charge may be in order. 

Justice Department officials say that when senators were considering Eric Holder’s nomination to be attorney general last year, he didn’t given them all the legal briefs he had signed from his time in private practice.

Holder now has told the Senate Judiciary Committee about the lapse in turning over copies of the legal filings.

Fein Tunes

Sometimes when a politician attempts to look cool, they look like an idiot.  For example, do I really care what Senator Feingold likes to listen to on his iPod?  Let’s see, he voted for a ridiculous health care bill that is full of pork and would be incredibly destructive to our country.  His signature legislation restricting our freedom to speak during elections has been ruled largely unconstitutional.  He voted for massive deficits, tremendous spending, and tax hikes.  And I’m supposed to like him more because he digs Van Morrison? 

Um, no.