More from the Annals of Film Tax Credits

Jack Carver swings out against the state's film tax credits in a piece yesterday at the Isthmus. Not surprisingly, I don't find it a very helpful way to think of the credits.

Let's start with Carver what seems to believe is the central purpose of the credits: to entice Hollywood movies to film here in Wisconsin. That may be one of the results, but can't be the goal. The actual purpose of the credits is to help create a self-sufficient film industry here in Wisconsin.

These things take time and there are a number of Wisconsin-specific issues that make building a film industry difficult (like the weather). Credits are best looked at as being seed money for a start-up. No, you're probably not going to see much of a return in the first few years, but after a while the dividends should start paying off. Only in this case, the money isn't just being used to kick start a company, it's trying to start and an entire industry. There will be growing pains.

This is why comparing the film credits to those offered to traditional manufacturing companies like Harley or Mercury Marine isn't exactly comparing apples to apples. Let's face it manufacturing credits are basically tax-payer funded bribes to keep companies here. Film credits are also essentially bribes, but they 1.) bring people to Wisconsin and 2.) create and infrastructure and train current residents to make movies so that someday we will be able to make them ourselves.

Right now current credit cap is set at $500,000 which is hardly "dolling out cash like the Pentagon." Even when the state refunded $5 million in the first year of the program, it still represented a nearly negligible portion of the budget. Nearly every industry in Wisconsin receives some sort of economic assistance from the state: the film folks are asking for their piece of the pie.

Carver goes on to summarizes the arguments for the credits thusly:

The defense of the program, as I see it, stems from two arguments. First, if any economic benefit to the state can be foreseen, then a generous subsidy may be the only way to entice film crews to Wisconsin, since just about every other state has been engaged in a vicious rat race to give welfare to Hollywood. 

No. The credits exist to provide an incentive to compensate for Wisconsin's inherit deficiencies in film-making, like climate or a complete lack of sound technicians. There's nothing anyone can do about winter in Wisconsin, but, over time, there will be something the state can do about the complete lack of sound technicians in the state or dearth of indoor studio space. Tax credits help Wisconsin catch up.

Second, there is the cultural element. Can the production of a film in Wisconsin promote the state, its natural beauty, its cities, etc? 

This is where Carver starts to veer off the road. The point of establishing a film industry in Wisconsin is not for promotional purposes. If it were, the credits could probably just straight out of the Tourism advertising budget.  The credits should be designed to help create a profitable industry that creates entertainment products people want to buy. If that means turning downtown Racine into a post-apocalyptic hellscape populated by mutant zombies, so be it. Which is why this next graph is just silly:

Here's an idea. Offer tax credits to companies who will shoot films that are set in Wisconsin, rather than to those who use Wisconsin as a stage for another location. Never, for instance, should a movie that takes place in Minnesota be subsidized to shoot in Wisconsin. It's imperative that every viewer knows that those inviting blue lakes in the background are ours, not theirs. 

It's really not. Georgia's film commission requires any recipient of tax credits to attach this logo to the credits.

It's actually a brilliant idea: the logo is so bright and big that it's nearly impossible to miss and as a result I know that "The Walking Dead" and "Archer" are both filmed/animated in Atlanta. It's really no different than knowing that the Saturn I used to own was built in Tennessee because there was a sticker on the inside of the door.

But I'm getting off point. Most people, and it sure seems like Carver falls into this group, usually subscribe to two fallacies about entertainment: 1.) that it can only be created in New York, LA or Nashville and 2.) that it is created through some kind of voodoo. Actually, it can be created anywhere and is shockingly as mundane as any other business. And just like any other business, investors want to see their money spent wisely. I've heard that it's a lot easier to win financing for film projects simply by telling investors that filming will take place in a location that offers tax credits, regardless of how lucrative the incentives actually are. There were something like two dozen films -- mostly small pictures with budgets well below $10 million -- with at least an interest in filming in Wisconsin when the tax credits began and nearly all of them bailed once the program was curtailed.

Again, even back at its original level of between $5-10 million a year is probably comparable to what the state wastes every year by not having a film industry.  The UW system has no less than three schools with Radio, TV and Film departments that are essentially useless in Wisconsin (unless you want to be a DJ). It costs the state somewhere in the neighborhood of $150,000 to educate someone from kindergarten through college: if any one of those students want to get into the film industry, they have to leave the state and take its investment in them with them. Anyone want to bet that between 25-75 of the thousands of kids graduating in Wisconsin this month head on out to Cali to give the movie business a shot?

The problem with the original film tax credit program is that the people who bought into it thought it was a fun and sexy way to induce famous people to Wisconsin so they could spend like, well, movie stars. They were wrong, but instead of tweeking the program they thought it would be easier to just scapegoat the "Hollywood welfare" queens because that was the easy thing to do. Unfortunately, the smaller, local filmmakers for whom every dollar is squeezed to death and who were depending on the program got screwed.

So the first thing Wisconsin needed to do, but didn't, was to establish realistic goals and expectations from the program. Carver notes that Louisiana shelled out big bucks for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but this was the plan Louisiana set for itself almost a decade ago. It wanted to be a major producer of films and was aggressive in doing so. Last year it dropped $100 million on just four movies. While that should seem ridiculous to just about anyone, Louisiana did some early targeted tax crediting for film infrastructure which paid off. Today it's one of the largest production hubs outside of California.

Wisconsin probably isn't capable of being that kind of producer, nor would it probably want to be; but, again, this is part of the problem of looking at the tax credits in a strictly tit-for-tat economic analysis. Think of the credits along the same line of building a small park with a playground in a neighborhood: it doesn't provide a business service or immediate economic value, but it does increase the property values of the nearby houses and keeps the kids from having to go to other parks across town. The credits serve as a buttress against the immigration of the creative class from Wisconsin. That alone should be worth $10 million a year.

There's really no reason why a more finely tuned credit program can't succeed in Wisconsin, so long as the lessons learned from the first go-around are implemented. These include, but aren't limited to:

• Very detailed and specific declarations of what expenses and salaries qualify for the credit.

• Training for government officials conducting the oversight and auditing.

• Estimates of projected costs provided to the state before filming begins.

• Sunset the program after 10-15 years. (This should be more than enough time to get the film industry moving in Wisconsin)

The bottom line is that most people treat filmmakers -- and especially local filmmakers -- like children running around with their parent's Super 8 camera: it's cute and fun, but incomprehensible how someone can make a living doing it. Since most people don't understand how their neighbor could make a living being a filmmaker they see no economic or social value in the occupation and therefore don't see it being worth of the same kind of tax protections as the manufacturing company that probably won't be around in 20 years any way.

So there. We've talked about this issue here, here, here, here, and here. I know this is a losing issue, but I'm still always disheartened by the uproar this issue causes. The state gets bilked for hundreds of millions of dollars every year in fraud, bullshit tax breaks to people and corporations that don't need them, unaccountable programs and overpriced public works projects, but suddenly everyone shits their pants over $5 million bucks because it went to a walking scapegoat (rich, out-of-state, showbiz folk!) and gives folks the chance to beat their chests. It's so fucking predictable.

The Bush Administration's Profoundly Awful Intelligence Policies Actually Prevented the CIA from Finding bin Laden

It shouldn't come as any surprise that many supporters of former President Bush are now rushing to sing the praises of the policies that killed Osama bin Laden, and while the prominence of the sexier of those policies -- enhanced interrogation, indefinite detention, rendition, etc. -- is still murky at the moment, there is one policy that conservatives seemed to have forgotten: the Bush administration's all-out war with the Central Intelligence Agency.

Starting some time in the first half of 2002, CIA was on the losing end of just about every bureaucratic struggle it fought with the White House. Some folks blame Donald Rumsfeld for this, the theory being that CIA's successful invasion of Afghanistan made the Pentagon look bad. Whatever the causes, there can be little denying that CIA's relationship with the White House was so abysmal that it's little wonder bin Laden wasn't found until after Bush left office.

The list of CIA's grievances is extensive. Many analysts thought their portfolios were being taken from them and delivered to the nebulous Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon during the run-up to the Iraq War. VP Cheney apparently applied pressure to Iraq analysts in the Agency to come up with the necessary connections that would build a case for war. And when no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, just about everyone at the Agency felt they were unjustly blamed despite warning the White House before the war.

CIA's relationship to the Bush White House was pretty much over at this point. Bush never seemed to trust the CIA again after the WMD fiasco. There's even reason to suggest that Bush thought elements within CIA were trying to sabotage him political (see the Joe Wilson affair).

The war in Iraq also started to give the Agency fits. First, it distracted them from an already difficult mission in Afghanistan, where bin Laden and much of the leadership of the Taliban were still at large. Then the Iraq insurgency got out of hand and required CIA to devote even more energy and resources to a situation they were never crazy about to begin with. The relationship was so dysfunctional that by the end of 2003 CIA agents were grumbling to the press at an unprecedented level.

2004 got off to a terrible start with the leak of an undercover operative by the White House, an event that many in CIA took to be a petty act of political vengeance. During this time, the Bush White House started developing closer to ties to the National Security Agency, not only because they were in charge of the controversial eavesdropping  program, but also because they operated under the auspices of Rumsfeld's Pentagon. Morale at the agency was apparently awful and made worse by the fact that a number of their operations were outsourced to private contractors who, in many cases, were former Agency employees now working at a significant pay increase.

In the middle of the year DCI George Tenet left and gave Bush the chance to appoint one of his own guys to the Agency. He picked Porter Goss a then-Congressman who brought in his Congressional staff and immediately began butting heads with career intelligence officials, presumably at the behest of the White House. Goss tenure was marked by the departure of enormous swathes of CIA's senior leadership who took with them decades of experience and was largely considered a disaster. He was so awful that Bush even canned him out of the blue one Friday afternoon.

Aside from crushing morale inside the Agency, Goss tenure mas marked by an almost total stripping of authority and prestige when the Intelligence Community was reorganized and the Director of CIA was replaced as de facto leader of the community by the Office of the Director of National Security, which was another huge of the Agency's turf. It was also during Goss' reign that the Iraq insurgency went to hell and the demand for reliable intelligence was at its greatest since the war began, intelligence that was nearly impossible to obtain due to all of the dysfunction back at Langley. Once again, CIA shouldered much of the blame.

Oh yeah, all this time the CIA was put in charge of the enhanced interrogation program even though interrogations had been the purview of the FBI and Army. They had no experience, resisted the program at first and bore all the legal risk.

When Goss was finally shown the door, Bush appoint NSA director Michael Hayden to the post. in 2006 Though Hayden was widely respected in the community, there were concerns about his ties to Rumsfeld and  Pentagon largely because he would still retain his rank in the Air Force (and uniform), even as director of what is ostensibly a civilian agency. Again, most people in the agency interpreted the move to be the Wite House's way of ensuring the primacy of electronic and signals intelligence, both the fortes of NSA, over CIA's human intelligence gathering strengths. This isn't a small detail. Even though the Bush administration increased the budgets of the intelligence community, much of the money apparently went to funding satellites and other electronic intercepting equipment.

Why? Because from the very beginning the Bush Administration was not satisfied with the timeliness of human intelligence, which frequently takes years to develop sources. It was also human intel that created the WMD fiasco in Iraq. They wanted instant gratification and were willing to sacrifice quality for quantity; so instead of training language interpreters, money went to voice pattern recognition software.

Even collecting intelligence on the battlefield played second fiddle to appeasing the social conservative wing of the Bush Administration's political base when the Pentagon kicked out over 60 linguists for being gay.

The final straw occurred when Bush commuted Scooter Libby's sentence in the leak case. There was really no other way to read the move being anything other than a slap in the Agency's face.

The Bush Administration was at war with the intelligence community for a vast majority of Bush's time in office. These policies essentially drove away experience and talent, withheld resources and crippled the Agency's mission at a time when the President said the country needed it most. It is absolutely asinine to suggest that these policies lead to the death of Osama bin Laden.

Tensions only really started to ease when Robert Gates, himself a former DCI, was appointed Secretary of Defense. When Obama appointed Leon Penetta -- a consummate bureaucratic operator -- to be DCI, it was clear he was being brought in to clean up the mess made by the Bush administration. The bin Laden raid was an enormous success for an agency that has been kicked around for most of the last decade.

In the final analysis, the Bush Administration may have had the worst Intelligence policy in American history. They held grudges, didn't learn lessons from mistakes, they deliberately antagonized the very people who were charged with collecting intelligence, they were believed they were better at the job then the experts ... and at the end of the day it all added up to create a situation where the White House really didn't even trust the CIA, the agency that is the final arbiter of what is fact.

And Congress, which is responsible for oversight of the intel community, basically deferred to the White House's lead.

The point is this: it doesn't matter if the intel that helped catch bin Laden came from someone being waterboarded at Gitmo in the big picture. All of the controversial policies that involved tough ethical questions are almost insignificant compared to the massive management policies that the Bush White House botched time and time again. These policies actually prevented CIA from catching bin Laden.

And probably no other policy displays that fact more than the Bush Administation's attitudes toward Pakistan. In Pervez Musharraf, the Bush Administration thought they had an ally and were determined to keep him in power. What they probably didn't consider is that part of the calculus of keeping Musharraf in power may have been the General's ability to placate elements in the Pakistani military that were aiding Al-Qaeda. The Bush Administration let Pakistan dictate the extent of CIA involvement in their country, even though, most people were pretty sure that's where Al-Qaeda was hiding. They may have been correct in trusting Musharraf, but asking a country how many spies the US can keep inside it's borders sort of defeats the entire purpose of espionage.

This was no way to run an intelligence organization.

GOP Recall Candidate Kicks Campaign Off by Telling Voters there was a Military Coup in America Last Weekend

Kim Simac -- better known as Glenn Beck's favorite childrens book author -- kicked off her campaign for state senate yesterday with a small rally, then scamper over to her blog to push the conspiracy theory that there was a militrary coup in the United States last Sunday. Here's a screen cap from her blog:

The premise of this latest conspiracy theory is that President Obama was not responsible for issuing the order to raid Osama bin Laden's compound last Sunday, that he was "over-ruled" by either military leaders or CIA director Leon Penetta (the theory's rather vague on just whom -- but the important thing is that it certainly wasn't the President!).

The implications of this happening are nothing short of profound: military leaders don't "over-rule" the command-in-chief, that's called a coup d'etat. The source that Simac points to actually uses the word "coup" in his email to some dubious web site no one's ever heard of before.

Anyway, Media Matters has the definition of Mutiny and Sedition from the U.S. Code of Military Justice if you'd like to see for yourself. I know Kim Simac sure as hell didn't.

Better to take 16 Hours and get the Job Done, then take 7 Years and Not

The straws some conservatives are grasping at in a desperate attempt to find something to slam Obama on are hilarious.

By the way, it turns out that thinking things through a little longer probably saved lives:

On Tuesday, White House officials began to offer more details on exactly how Obama had shaped the final assault plan. In particular, the President, they said, urged the Pentagon to revisit the number of helicopters it planned to bring into Pakistani airspace on the mission. One of those extra helicopters later played a role in the mission.The president made his concerns known in a briefing about 10 days before the assault on the bin Laden compound. According to senior aides, Obama felt that the special operations COA, or course of action, was too risky. Under the COA at that time, only two helicopters would enter Pakistani airspace, leaving little backup if something went wrong. “I don’t want you to plan for an option that doesn’t allow you to fight your way out,” the President told operational planners at the meeting, according to the notes of one participant.

So the plan was revised. Ultimately, four helicopters flew into Pakistani airspace, including two refueling helicopters that carried additional personnel. In the end, the extra forces didn’t need to fight their way out of the compound, but a backup helicopter did play a key role in the operation. One of the two primary assault helicopters, an HH-60 Pave Hawk lost its lift, landed hard and had to be destroyed. The backup landed to lift its passengers to safety. “The President created the ‘fight your way out’ option,” explained an administration official.

Let Me Watch My Stories!

Freedom Eden's epic blog post on the news of Osama bin Laden's death was truly a reaction for the ages:

(Click to embiggen.)

That's right: in the middle of what's arguably the biggest news story of the last ten years, Freedom Eden's gut reaction was "Bin Laden dead? But what will ever become of NeNe?"

Whose says blogs can't have gravitas?

The Intel Mother Lode and Pakistan

One of the strange things about capturing Saddam Hussein is that, relatively speaking, he didn't know much. He was, after all, the dictator of an enormous bureaucracy and had thousands of loyal followers who were in charge of the day-to-day nation-running operations. If, for example, his interrogator wanted to know who were the names of Iraq's spies in Iran there's just not much of a chance that Saddam was going to know that kind of detail. (His interrogations were mostly about deconstructing the thought processes that led to certain decisions.)

Bin Laden is a different case entirely. The size of the intel cache they recovered from the raid seems enormous and reporters are already speculating what it could mean for taking out Al-Qaeda, but there's another angle to this that really hasn't been discussed yet: What if one of the thumb drives recovered from the scene contains a list of Pakistani ISI contacts? Would this the kind of smoking gun that might cause a tectonic change in US-Pakistan relations?

Probably not. The Pakistan is too big to fail argument has been around for a while now despite Pakistan being the center for anti-American sentiment over the course of five decades now. Military action is almost impossible in a nuclear-armed country with 170,000,000 people. Still, the roots of American animosity run deep and, to be honest, I don't even know what the origins are. Was there some event that produced the loathing? Some kind of offense or slight? Off the top of my head I can't think of one.

Steve Coll suggests that there really isn't one event that anyone can pinpoint, but that it's an outgrowth of a country with a historically weak government that has little resources to care and educate it's people (and not just the poor ones), which created a vacuum filled by the madrassas built by supporters of the virulent strain of Islamism that developed around the world in the middle of the 20th century. That would mean the problem is as cultural as it is political.

There would be a number of different ways of trying to correct that problem. Again, military action would be out of the picture. Withdrawing foreign aide probably won't help either. So-called "public diplomacy" really hasn't worked in the past. So now what? This might be the right time to develop a Marshall Plan for Pakistan.

It's an idea that gets tossed around frequently, but never really implemented. Now might be the perfect opportunity to make a Marshall Plan-type program a condition of US foreign aide to Pakistan: they tell us where the money is needed, then we go with them to help distribute the aide. Most countries, especially proud and emerging nations like Pakistan who think of themselves as being one of the world's big players, don't like this kind partnership because it make their government look weak and unable to take care of their own citizens. But when that hard drive does show up with a ton of Al-Qaeda contacts in the ISI, it will be a golden opportunity for the US use a great deal of leverage to changing hearts and minds from the ground up.

Your Spectacularly Stupid Bin Laden Post of the Day

As one might expect there are many of them, but the Progressive's laughable exercise in incoherent emoting probably deserves the Grand Jury Award. Let's go to the tape!

What bin Laden did was to use violence as a ready tool to advance his purposes.

What bin Laden did was to wantonly sacrifice the lives of innocent people in service of those purposes. [...]

In this regard, bin Laden is no different a mass murderer than Lyndon Johnson was in Vietnam.

In this regard, bin Laden is no different a mass murderer than George W. Bush was in Iraq.

Oh, there is one big difference: bin Laden killed far fewer innocent people than any of those U.S. Presidents.

The thing I love most about this nonsense is that Rothschild does his damnedest to promote the idea that an evil deed is an evil deed no matter how large or small only to destroy the very framework of his argument at the very end. He want the reader to believe that past American presidents are really no better than bin Laden because they too used violence. Then he tries a judo toss of logic designed to make the reader think that U.S. presidents are actually worse than bin Laden by virtue of the magnitude of their evil deeds. But the only person who ends up on the floor is Rothschild because he essentially pulls the rug out from beneath his own argument.

It's like he's taking aim at a target with a canon only to remove the canon from the equation right before he fires (but that might be too violent an analogy, natch).

Before we move on, I should point out that Rothschild isn't very clear, and probably intentionally so, about what the "mass murder" he is referring to here. Was it the raid that occurred last night, or the aggregate US military action over the course of the last decade? I imagine that Rothschild would like the reader to think of the two as being one in the same, but -- and let's face it -- what instigated the piece was the killing of bin Laden last night. He was considered a fugitive, was being hunted by militaries and law enforcement agencies from around the world and, this is the most important part, had ample opportunity to turn himself in and demonstrate his innocence in any number of legal systems. He not only chose not to, but continued to flaunt his behavior so as to continue to encourage violence.

Until we renounce violence as a convenient tool, until we stop sacrificing innocent lives, until we no longer excuse the mass murder that our own government commits, we’re not in much of a position to celebrate.

I really don't even know what this sentence means. It's such a sweeping statement that it is almost rendered meaningless.

And spare me Obama’s talk of “justice” being done. That’s exactly the same phrase Bush used after U.S. forces gunned down Saddam Hussein’s sadistic sons, Uday and Qusay.

It’s not “justice,” as we’ve come to revere it in this country: a system that upholds due process and habeas corpus and assumes the innocence of the accused and allows for trial by jury.

And that's exactly the point. In order to be afforded those avenues of justice, bin Laden had to agree to the framework of the social compact. He didn't. The United States even went out of their way to offer him due process even though as a foreign national we didn't really need to bother. Bin Laden made the conscious decision to live out side the law -- and not just one particular law, but just about every law on the planet.

No, what Obama and Bush were talking about was rough justice or frontier justice.

The word “justice” should not adorn an assassination.

And now we come to the big finish. To say that bin Laden was "assassinated" is absurd and insulting. Assassins don't tell their targets they're coming. We've been doing that for 10 years now. What occurred last night was a manhunt, not an assassination. No one should even think about lamenting the loss of "assumption of innocence." It's the law that grants that right and since bin Laden refused to live within the law to the detriment of the well-being of many, he isn't afforded any such protections.

First Pic of a Dead Bin Laden?

Possibly here???

The pic looks of dubious origin for all kinds of reasons, but it's the first one I've found claiming to be the kill shot (as it were). Via here by way of Memeorandum.

MORE: Yup, totally photoshopped.

Morning, Bitches

via

Pot, Kettle. Kettle, Pot.

Here's Ron Johnson being asked the tough questions:

Donald Trump. He described real estate mogul as a superb marketer, but doubts whether he is a serious presidential candidate.

That's funny, because last year the very same thing was said about a guy named Ron Johnson ... and yet here we are.

Incidentally, I'm beginning to pick up on a pattern with regard to Wisconsin-based media accounts interviews, press conferences or other interactions with Johnson: they all drip with a patronizing condescension that's subtle, yet very hard to ignore. Clink on the link above to see what I mean.

When asked what he thinks should be done about the budget deficit, Johnson replies "Constitutional amendment!" which is silly considering only 17 amendments have ever been enacted. It's a completely unrealistic way of correcting a problem, so unrealistic that you can basically visualize the reporter making the universal jerking off hand motion instead of asking follow-up questions like "How much support do you have for that in the Senate right now?" "How many meetings have you had to get an Amendment passed?" "What kind of legal issues are you running into crafting the Amendment's language?" and "Who are you consulting to fix those legal problems?"

The key to being a good interview is providing fresh answers to obvious questions, especially when the answers are already widely known that eventually lead into uncharted territory. Interviews with Johnson thus far have been the exact opposite and many consist of local reporters asking the bear minimum getting the obligatory bullshit answers and never bothering to do any follow-up because they know all too well there isn't any point.

The "Johnson addressed a variety of other issues" section is indicative of just how little reports warrant Johnson's opinion: I felt like Johnson was going to tell me what his favorite color was or how his favorite class is "recess."

Invisible Hand of the Free Market Crushes "Atlas Shrugged," Owners Blame Critics with Straight Faces

Funny stuff:

Twelve days after opening "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1," the producer of the Ayn Rand adaptation said Tuesday that he is reconsidering his plans to make Parts 2 and 3 because of scathing reviews and flagging box office returns for the film.

"Critics, you won," said John Aglialoro, the businessman who spent 18 years and more than $20 million of his own money to make, distribute and market "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1," which covers the first third of Rand's dystopian novel. "I’m having deep second thoughts on why I should do Part 2."

I how love movie-makers -- not just these movie-makers, but all of them -- blame critics when people don't like their entertainments. Just one of these days I'd love to see a producer lash out and say, "Frankly, the lead was too coked up to read his lines half the time, I only hired the hot chick because she blew me in my office during her audition and the director was an investor's nephew who never filmed anything more elaborate than cock shots with his iPhone. Why did I drop $20 million on this project? Because I'm a fucking idiot."

On a brighter note, the movie did provide someone with "deep thoughts" of some kind, so it has that going for it.

MORE: HotAir blames the poor box office on marketing problems:

The obvious Plan B here would be to reach out to prominent libertarians, starting with the Paul family, natch, and do whatever the producers are legally able to do to get them to help promote it. Rand Paul’s already regaling Senate committee hearings with paeans to his favorite Rand books; maybe it’s as simple as sending him a copy of the film (assuming he hasn’t seen it yet) and asking him to put out the word among the Paul army if he likes it. Say what you will about them, but devoted libertarians aren’t stingy when it comes to donating to causes they believe in. Or, if the Pauls are unavailable, the producers could wait a few months and then try to hire Gary Johnson to promote it. He should have plenty of free time by then.

Seriously? His idea is to hire a niche politician to sell the damn movie? Here's a much better idea: hire people who know how to make a fucking movie.

Shrugged apparently cost $20 million to make. This year's best picture Oscar winner, The King's Speech, cost $15 million. It's possible.

The Tea Party Express Included a Laundry List a Blurbs Describing how Bad Atlas Shrugged in an Email Telling its Membership to go see the Movie

Fucking brilliant.

We too can Make School Yard Taunts

See: Dooley, Fred:

By the way, does Fred own a mini-bike?

Separated at birth?

Just another example of a useless blogger who got shit-canned from his cushy gig at an eighth-rate "think tank" and seems to know everything about politics except winning a city council race in Racine.

It's real easy to go down this road. Come up with something better next time, Dooley.

Cujo Burglarizes Recall Hansen Office in Green Bay and Eats All of the Tea Bagger Homework

Jesus, this is going to be a mess:

Green Bay police are investigating an apparent break-in at the office of the “Recall Dave Hansen”effort at 1136 W. Mason St.

Petitions, a computer and T-shirts were among the items reported stolen, police said.

The Democratic state senator is among the lawmakers being targeted in recall efforts stemming from Wisconsin’s ongoing budget controversy.

The burglar or burglars broke a window to make entry, police said. The incident occurred between 5 p.m. Thursday and 8 a.m. Friday, police Lt. David Paral said.

Organizers of the effort, in an email to media, blamed the break-in on “the (opposition) of ‘Recall Dave Hansen.’” Police said they did not have descriptions of suspects.

Total value of the missing items is slightly more than $1,000, Paral said.

Before the Recall Hansen folks get too carried away pointing fingers, let’s get a few things straight here:

• There is NO INCENTIVE for Hansen supporters to commit such a crime. Hansen won his district by 32% most recently, so even if enough signatures did get gathered by the recall effort, there’s little likelihood of Hansen losing a recall election.

• The Recall Hansen team also has had some organizational issues, like finding enough volunteers. This was apparently such a problem that they offered to pay people to do gather signatures by posting an ad on Craigslist:

The recall Hansen group is even looking to pay people to collect signatures. In a Craigslist ad they posted, they offer 50 cents a signature saying there is an unlimited short term earning potential.

This, of course, is the same kind of pay-for-names scheme that conservatives used to blast the artists formerly known as ACORN for doing, under the auspices that it led to voter fraud.

• Or just regular old felons. The Recall Hansen folks recently had to fire a paid, out-of-state canvasser after he was arrested for stealing and subsequently was shown to have an extensive criminal record.

• Originally there were two Recall Dave Hansen efforts, but they merged, a process that can lead to leadership quarrels and disgruntled ex-members.

But the biggest reason of all to be skeptical of the Recall Hansen folks is how they’ve publicly marked their progress thus far. It’s been scatter-shot at best. On April 1st they said:

The recall Hansen group says they are halfway to the 13,852 required signatures, and hope to be all the way, by Tuesday, election day [April 4th].

So they thought they could bring in 7000 signatures in 4 days. Which they apparently accomplished:

The recall campaign against Sen. Dave Hansen, D-Green Bay, said its haul of more than 3,000 signatures Tuesday likely propelled it past its goal of getting enough signatures to force a recall election.

Keep in mind this was before both recall campaigns merged, a process that should have added signatures to the grand total, but somehow, three days later on April 7th, they were still short of their goal:

That combined effort is now very close to having the required number of signatures after a surprising release of the total this afternoon.

After combining signatures and adding up the total, we are at 12,973. We need 13,851. Victory is a reality with 19 days to go.

And even though they were able to bring in "4000 signatures" during the three days before the Election Day, they still needed another week to gather the 900 signatures that put them over the hump (yet again) yesterday, when the campaign announced that it had finally gotten the signatures required to start a recall:

Organizers of the campaign to recall state Senator Dave Hansen of Green Bay say they have  enough signatures to deliver to the State.

The groups targeting the Democratic state senator are planning a victory party Saturday. Then they say they’ll double-check their petitions before handing them over to the State.

Wow, what awful timing. (And given their track record, I'm sure they'll find a few duplicate signatures or whatever and once again be just short of the goal. Probably not a good idea to throw the party before the chickens are counted ... or hatched ... or whatever, you get the point.)

Here’s what one can reasonably suspect happened:

The Recall Hansen organization is basically being run by amateurs who are having a trouble finding signatures. The problem is that they are probably accountable to someone, somewhere in Wisconsin (my guess is in Madison). This looks like they have inflated their progress to the press and, more importantly, their superiors and now find themselves in a bit of a bind with only ten days left before the recall period ends. So someone, who is probably pretty new to politics, but still thinks of themselves as the next Karl Rove cooks up a little plan wherein a mysterious robber steals away with the recall signatures in the middle of the night, before the gang has had the chance to turn them in to the GAB, which not only spares them the wrath of their overlords in Madison, but also has the added effect of making the opposition look crooked.

Bravo, Machiavelli.

Do I have any proof of this? No more than the Recall Hansen people do of Watergate-style burglaries led by the opposition. Throwing a brick through one’s own campaign office window in an attempt to win some sympathy is one of the oldest tricks in the book, but at the end of the day the Recall Hansen people have to answer one very simple question:

What the fuck were the signatures doing in a place where someone could steal them? Why didn’t someone bring them home at the end of every day and put them in a safe place? I don’t care how safe the neighborhood is, they should have at least put in place a system that would have made accidental loss or misplacement of the signatures damn near impossible.

This doesn’t look like a crime so much as an idiotic hoax. I'd be more than happy to eat crow on this if proved wrong, but when it's all said an done I doubt we will ever be any closer to knowing what actually happened after an investigation than we do right now. Unless, of course, the Recall Hansen people broke the window from the inside or something incredibly stupid like that. Which is entirely possible.

MORE: Holy shit! There's actually a picture of the broken window! The commenters at the WTAQ site aren't buying it either. Here's "Chris," who also makes a great point about the stolen t-shirts:

Look at the photo. You can't climb into a window like that without knocking down the glass on the lower ledge or you will find yourself in the hospital.

Do you seriously think the opposition is going to want to steal t-shirts? It doesn't have any significant effect on the opposition to take them, and make it far more likely that you would get caught. Petitions, you bet, T-shirts, no, you would have to be an idiot to take them.

The main thing though is the glass. Clearly nobody climbed in through that window.

For the uninitiated, WTAQ is the Fox Valley's major FM conservative talk radio station. By the way, the picture above, which I ganked from the station's web site, was taken by the Recall Hansen office's lead organizer, David VanderLeest, for what it's worth.

Widgerson also has the pic and notes that only 150 signatures were supposedly taken. Fair enough. (I still find the arithmetical skills of the organization wanting and would happily wager that the signatures collected by the felon who was recently released from his employ will be challenged.) He also asks (in jest, one assumes) if the negros have an alibi.

The proprietor of Seaside Sadness also seems to be a psychic detective who knows who committed the dastardly deed!

Cartman's Incredible Gift
Tags: SOUTH
PARKmore...

FOX11 out of Green Bay is calling the incident, a "possible" burglary, which suggests either they or the GBPD aren't entirely convinced it was wasn't an inside job (So this is the rabbit hole through which the Truthers must have slipped!).

NBC26 out of Green Bay, has the last available update:

Those with the recall campaign say police are now involved after someone smashed a window, swiping everything from dozens of recall signatures to a computer. The organizer of the effort is accusing one group of committing the crime.

"There were some petitions stolen, our computer is missing, some of the recall signs and they cleaned us out of all our recall T-shirts," says Hansen recall organizer, David Vander Leest.

That's a lot of stuff to cram through that little window ... unless they tossed the aforementioned t-shirts out the window one by one through a kind of bucket brigade of thieves, which would be a killer named for a garage band.

NBC26 also has a comment from Hansen himself:

Senator Dave Hansen was shocked to hear about the break-in, but says it's too early to point fingers. "I think that's up to the police to determine, I mean that's out there.  Let the police make that decision and determination of who is responsible," explains Senator Hansen.

 Well, what did you expect him to say?

One last thing: the Recall Hansen folks aren't the only gang to issue Mission Accomplished! pronouncements in the press only to have to re-examine their figures. The Recall Wirch -- another incumbent who won his last election by 33% -- folks claimed they had enough signatures almost two weeks ago, but so far as anyone has been able to tell haven't even submitted their signatures to the GAB yet.

Teabagger Tax Day Rally Update

Sounds like it's going to be a quiet affair.

Once and Future Recalls

If you missed the State Journal's piece on the the midpoint of the recall efforts around the state, give it a quick read.

It's worth pointing out that if Dems manage to pull in all the signatures required to recall the 8 eligible senators that would have no less than 138,671 signatures, all of whom would presumably be game to sign recall petitions against Scott Walker. That's just over 25% of the 540,206 signatures needed to recall Scott Walker -- all of them coming away from the Democratic strongholds and population centers of places like Milwaukee and Dane counties (not to mention other target rich environments).

This is probably one of the reasons spending time and money trying to recall Grothman and Lazich aren't necessarily bad ideas. Both senators should be able to handily beat back any recall elections, but there are bigger points to be scored. 40,000+ signatures represent over 7% of the total needed to recall Walker and if the Dems can pull those kinds of numbers out of extremely hostile territory they shouldn't have too much trouble finding signatures elsewhere.

The GOP doesn't have this kind of fall back plan. Those poor cats running through Mark Miller's district looking for signatures? Those names will probably just end up on a list they already belong on. And the volunteers? They'll probably end up pretty demoralized. The situation would only get worse if Dems manage to force 3-6 recall elections, while the GOP fails to force any. (And this is a decent possibility, since the only district they seem to have a fighting shot in is Holperin's, which is difficult to traverse on account of its ruralness.)

So on January 3rd, 2012 Dems wake up with a list of 140,000 people who want to recall Scott Walker, and that's before the even unlock the offices in Milwaukee, Madison, Kenosha, Racine, Eau Claire, Superior, Appleton/Neenah/Menasha, Stevens Point, Sheboygan, parts of Green Bay and so forth. They'll also have funds to go after the 11 senators who become eligible for recall the same day that Scott Walker does.

You can see where this is going, can't you?

Maryann Sumi has Made Her Decision; now let Her Enforce It!

Scott Walker thinks he's Andrew Jackson.

There's a good chance that the Wisconsin Supreme Court will be asked to decide the legality of  Walker's union-busting bill in the near future. Given how receptive Walker has been to the legal system, one can reasonably assume that if the Court decides against his favor, Walker will essentially ignore the ruling -- and, in essence, an entire branch of state government. That will prove to be an actual "constitutional crisis" of the kind Scott Fitzgerald tried to gin up earlier this month.

It's now also entirely possible that voters will deprive Walker of control of another branch of government -- the legislative -- before the biennial budget has a chance to be passed later this summer, which will undoubtedly result in the kind of political gridlock which leads to the kind of fiscal crisis that Walker has tried to gin up since his first day in office. That will provide him with an branch of government to ignore.

I'm not saying it's going to happen, but don't be surprised if it happens.

The Wisconsin GOP Must Crave Attention more than a 16 year-old Cutter with Daddy Issues to Pull Another Stunt Like This

So very nice of them to pull this shit at the end of a Friday (you know, because the courts are closed until Monday):

Madison - A controversial bill limiting collective bargaining for public workers has been officially published despite a temporary restraining order barring its publication by one state official.

The legislation was published Friday with a footnote that acknowledges the restraining order, but says state law "requires the Legislative Reference Bureau to publish every act within 10 working days after its date of enactment."

The restraining order was issued against Democratic Secretary of State Doug La Follette, but the bill was published by the reference bureau. The reference bureau was not included in the temporary restraining order.

Laws normally take effect a day after they are published, and Gov. Scott Walker's administration is proceeding as if it takes effect Saturday.

"Today the administration was notified that the LRB published the budget-repair bill as required by law," said a statement from Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch. "The administration will carry out the law as required."

So is it actually a law, even thought the published version specifically acknowledges the restraining order against its publication? Damned if I know. Damned if anyone else knows, for that matter, but it sure as hell doesn't legit. All it does is drag out this incredibly bitter conversation in an environment where Democrats are trying to gather enough signatures to recall GOP senators.

Oh, that's right! They're doing this precisely because they're getting creamed in the recall effort and must now believe that the upcoming Supreme Court election is rapidly becoming a lost cause. Best get this shit done now before the levers of government are wrested from the GOP.

Again, on a day when the watchword around the state was McCarthyism, there is no better friend to the long-term interests of Wisconsin Democrats than Wisconsin Republicans.

On What Planet did the Wisconsin GOP Think this would be a Good Idea?

It's really insulting just how stupid Scott Walker thinks the people of Wisconsin are:

Professor William Cronon, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is now in a serious tangle with none other than the state Republican Party, in yet another battle over Scott Walker's new anti-public employee union law. After Cronon posted a piece on out-of-state think tanks and interest groups that would spur the law, the GOP has responded with an open-records request on Cronon's own state account e-mails.

On March 15, Cronon posted a blog entry entitled, "Who's Really Behind Recent Republican Legislation in Wisconsin and Elsewhere? (Hint: It Didn't Start Here)", seeking to focus attention on out of state conservative groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the infamous phone call that Walker had a month ago with blogger Ian Murphy, who posed as Republican financier David Koch.

"I don't want this to become an endless professorial lecture on the general outlines of American conservatism today, so let me turn to the question at hand: who's really behind recent Republican legislation in Wisconsin and elsewhere?" Cronon wrote. "I'm professionally interested in this question as a historian, and since I can't bring myself to believe that the Koch brothers single-handedly masterminded all this, I've been trying to discover the deeper networks from which this legislation emerged."

Then on March 17, as Cronon announced in a blog post Thursday, the state Republicans have filed an open-records request -- seeking to read his e-mails from his state university account.

I'm amazed that Walker supports are even able to feign such cluelessness of the absolute vitriol he inspires in opponents. There's a reason for it and it begins with the abject contempt Walker displays for just about anyone with the ability to add one and one.

MORE: Seriously, these people are tone deaf. From the MJS:

Thompson was not available for comment. But in an statement, Mark Jefferson, the party's executive director, said, "Like anyone else who makes an open records request in Wisconsin, the Republican Party of Wisconsin does not have to give a reason for doing so.

"I have never seen such a concerted effort to intimidate someone from lawfully seeking information about their government.

Un-fucking-believable. This asshole now thinks he's the one being intimidated!

And unlike anyone else "who make an open records request in Wisconsin" the state GOP is major political party. It may not be required to explain it's reasoning, but it sure looks suspect if it doesn't. Here's the rest of Jefferson's asinine statement. It's a shining example of transparent douche-baggery as you'll ever read:

"Further, it is chilling to see that so many members of the media would take up the cause of a professor who seeks to quash a lawful open records request. Taxpayers have a right to accountable government and a right to know if public officials are conducting themselves in an ethical manner. The Left is far more aggressive in this state than the Right in its use of open records requests, yet these rights do extend beyond the liberal left and members of the media.

"Finally, I find it appalling that Professor Cronon seems to have plenty of time to round up reporters from around the nation to push the Republican Party of Wisconsin into explaining its motives behind a lawful open records request, but has apparently not found time to provide any of the requested information.

"We look forward to the University’s prompt response to our request and hope those who seek to intimidate us from making such requests will reconsider their actions.”

The Wisconsin GOP seems hellbent on destroying the party brand. Keep digging, folks!

The Surgery that Saved Ron Johnson's Daughter's Life was Probably Developed in Socialist Hellhole that doesn't Speak the King's English

From Wonkroom:

America has certainly had its share of medical breakthroughs, but the procedure Johnson’s daughter received may not have been developed in the United States but rather in Brazil or France — nations that now benefit from some form of universal coverage.

According to CAP Senior Fellow (and resident biochemist) Dr. Lesley Russell, it is most likely that the surgery Carey had was first performed and reported in Brazil in 1975, where doctors described their version of the procedure as “the first successful report of total correction of transposition of the great vessels at the arterial level.” Alternatively, Johnson’s daughter may have had what’s known as The LeCompte procedure, which was developed in France in 1981.

OK, so Johnson goes national with the story of his daughter's surgery on Wednesday and two days later a little fact-checking turns out that one of the central origin myths of his campaign turns out to be dubious. Last year, however, the same story went unchallenged in the state of Wisconsin for six months. I know we don't have tthink tanks that can tackle the issues like CAP (unless you're in the mood to do the bidding of the Bradley Foundation), but couldn't someone have discovered this bit of information with a simple phone call to, say UW Hospital or the Mayo Clinic or something?

"Senator Johnson has this completely backwards."

I was going to take some time to go over Ron Johnson's rehash of his health care argument form last year's campaign in the Wall Street Journal, but someone has already done a much better job of doing so. Enjoy.

MORE: Memeorandum has more on just how shallow Johnson's argument is: Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, LA Times, Krugman, and Steve Benen, Steve Benen again, and Igor Volsky.

Voter ID Advocates getting ready to Screw U.S. Military Personnel

We've been harping on the Voter ID issue for a week or so now and today we were given a sparkling example of just what's kind of reform Voter ID advocates will be pushing for in the near future.

Over at the Northwoods Patriots blog (a tea party group based up north), there is a post detailing just how difficult Voter ID folks want to make proving one's identity at the polls. Not only are driver's licenses not acceptable forms of identification in their view, but neither are military IDs:

The MILITARY ID is not acceptable because you do not have to be a U. S. citizen to be a member of the U.S. military. The U.S. military does have as members, citizens of other nations.

Not once in the post is there any solution offered to any of its objections.

Yet Another Sketchy Randy Hopper Story

The guy is nothing if not prolific:

Sen. Randy Hopper (R-Fond du Lac) told WKOW27 News he played no role in the recent hire of a state employee.

Sources told WKOW27 News the employee is the same woman Hopper’s estranged wife,  Alysia Hopper referred to as Hopper’s mistress in a public statement and in a letter to a radio station.

Department of Regulation and Licensing spokesperson David Carlson said the woman, 26, was hired in February as a limited term communications specialist.  

And then...

In a telephone interview with WKOW27 News,  Hopper initially refused to respond to whether he had written a letter of reference or recommendation,   or intervened during the woman’s hiring process.

“I want to keep my involvement of anything as a private matter.   So, I’m going to maintain that.”

But Hopper later called a WKOW27 News reporter and said he had no involvement in the woman’s hiring.

And now...

State officials said the pay of a limited term employee  hired last month at the department of regulation and licensing is the equivalent of more than $42,000 annually.

WKOW27 News requested employment information after sources said the worker, 26, was the same person identified by Senator Randy Hopper’s estranged wife as a woman involved in an affair with Hopper.

Hopper denied to WKOW27 News any role in the woman’s hire.

Department of Regulation licensing spokesperson David Carlson said the employee was hired Feb. 7 to a limited term position as a communications specialist.

Carlson said the worker’s hourly wage is equivalent to an annual salary of $42,328.

Maybe I'm wrong, but a "communications specialist" who probably can no longer talk to the press should be paid a little less than the annual equivalent of $42,000.

Reagan on Unions

We've noted this before, but Ronald Reagan supported collective bargaining and he supported unions. Let's look at the tape:

The Amazing Paradox Implicit in Randy Hopper's Residency Woes and the Wisconsin GOP's Voter ID Agenda

Seriously, does anyone know where Randy Hopper voted last fall?

If I'm starting to sound like a broken record it's only because there are some rather significant ramifications that result from the answer to this question. There's also a pretty fascinating paradox that is evolving from this situation that should have ethicists and political scientists devouring this recall like an ice cream social at fat camp.

The Cap Times apparently knows the address of Hopper's current residence, but is keeping it under wraps in deference to security concerns. Fair enough (for me, at least, and at the moment; I'm sure there are some legal issues surrounding no one knowing where a law-maker lives, but in this case at least someone does). Determining where Hopper voted should be a pretty easy trail to follow considering records of who voted in each election are public information.

The residence Hopper vacated when he filed for divorce is in the Town (as opposed to the City) of Fond du Lac, where the polling place is at Town Hall. Keeping that in mind, there are a number of ways in which Hopper may have broken the law last November. Again, let me stress this is all hypothetical, since we don't know the details where he voted. We're outlining these scenarios in the hopes that someone will track this information down (something that anonymous bloggers can't really do).

• If the address Hopper gave to the Cap Times is located outside the town of Fond du Lac, then we next have to see where he voted. If Hopper's new digs are outside the town of Fond du Lac and he continued to vote inside the town of FdL, even though he has said publicly that he moved out 10 months ago (presumably to this new "apartment" cited by his staffers), we have a problem.

• If Hopper's new abode is inside the town of FdL he would still vote there, where, presumably, he would still be registered. However, a poll worker would have likely asked him if he still lived at the address he is registered at in the voter rolls. If he answered yes for the sake of convenience, and had not changed his registration since moving out, we now have to ask ourselves if this constitutes lying to a poll worker.

• If Hopper voted absentee or early voted, he would have had to essentially sign an affidavit confirming his residence. (Note: that's how it works in Winnebago County and I'm told that every county in Wisconsin has slightly different rules, but I can't imagine absentee/early vote procedures are all that different.) In any event, if Hopper did early vote, as many politicians and campaign workers apparently do, there would be a paper trail, a document that makes this all very cut and dry. He would have also been required to show a photo ID (again, at least in Winnebago County), and on that particular detail we have much more below.

Again, these are all hypothetical situations that could probably be dismissed with a quick trip to the Fond du Lac County Clerk's office and an open records request, but all of this is small ball compared to the larger Voter ID issue coming soon to a state legislature near you.

For years Wisconsin Republicans have been crying foul with allegations of voter fraud and stolen Elections. They've claimed that the only way to maintain the integrity of the vote is to require people to show a photo ID at the poll without giving much consideration to the lives lived by students, minority and low income families (traditionally Democratic voters, by the way) that have lives with less housing stability and can't take off 1-3 hours to go stand in line at the DMV between the hours of 8:00-5:00, Monday through Friday.

Hopper is also a busy guy, which is why I'd wager that Hopper availed himself of either early voting or absentee voting and in so doing left a paper trail that can resolve a lot of these questions. In both cases he would have had to sign documents certifying his residence. If he voted early (or "in-person absentee" as the kids call it), then he would have been required to show a photo ID.

Why is that important? Because when we look at the big picture of not just Hopper, but the laws governing how millions of people vote each year an amazing paradox becomes clear:

If Hopper has a state-issued photo ID for his current address, the apartment cited by his staff, which he received prior to last year's election when he voted legitimately at the proper polling place, then all of this discussion is kinda pointless. However, if he doesn't, as is his current right as a voter in Wisconsin, then the Wisconsin GOP's Voter ID argument falls through the floor. If the party backs him, Hopper becomes an extreme case of someone who can still vote legitimately despite serious questions about his ambiguous legal residency, which legitimize similar conditions for anyone who is not a state senator and demonstrates that IDs aren't necessary. Or the party can remain true to its own rhetoric, throw him under the proverbial bus and possibly lose the chance to push comprehensive Voter ID reform through the senate.

That's a dilemma that's almost cinematic in scope (albeit long on minutia). There's a lot going on here, but there's also a lot at stake. Voter ID is on its way and given the events of the last 6 weeks its entirely possible that Scott Walker will order it passed if he starts to get nervous about losing the senate. All of these questions and conjectures and hypotheticals can simply disappear with just a few answers. Unfortunately, Hopper's constituents -- of which I am one, may I remind you -- aren't being given those answers and that vacuum seems to get filled with even more questions.

MORE: This according to WKOW:

Campaign manager Jeff Harvey said Monday Hopper rented an apartment in the district.   But when an aide in Hopper’s senate office provided the address,  property records reflected a single family Town of Empire home co-owned by an employee of one of Hopper’s radio stations.   Campaign finance records also show the employee has contributed $450 to Hopper’s senate campaign committee.

Great. How long has he lived there? And where did he vote last November?

Crowdsourcing is hard.

MALcontends has more, as well.