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Monthly Archives: January 2012

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.25.12

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Good morning.

In Whitewater, it’s a mostly cloudy day ahead, with a high of thirty-three. In Madison, site of Gov. Walker’s 7 PM State of the State address, there will be a slight chance of flurries with a high of thirty-two.

At WisconinEye’s website, there will be a webcast of the speech, followed by the Democrats’ response, and thereafter political discussion and interviews with state legislators.

NASA recorded the Sun’s recent, large flare, and posted the video with an accompanying explanation:

The sun erupted late on January 22, 2012 with an M8.7 class flare, an earth-directed coronal mass ejection (CME), and a burst of fast moving, highly energetic protons known as a “solar energetic particle” event. The latter has caused the strongest solar radiation storm since September 2005 according to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

NASA’s Goddard Space Weather Center’s models predict that the CME is moving at almost 1,400 miles per second, and could reach Earth’s magnetosphere — the magnetic envelope that surrounds Earth — as early as tomorrow, Jan 24 at 9 AM ET (plus or minus 7 hours). This has the potential to provide good auroral displays, possibly at lower latitudes than normal.

Google’s daily puzzle asks for a name not of a famous man, but about his famous student: “I was arrested by the Inquisition in 1633 and then pardoned by the Catholic Church in 1992. One of my students had my story written in stone scrolls at his castle. What was my student’s name?” more >>

Presidential race 2012

Romney & Gingrich, Drudge Report & Huffington Post

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Embedded below are screenshots of the Drudge Report and Huffington Post, and from them one can see different views on Mitt Romney.

Matt Drudge is a Romney supporter, and on his site, the highlight is Newt Gingrich’s failure to excite a Florida debate audience. Down below, in the lower left, Drudge links to news of Romney’s income and tax returns. For one of Romney’s opponents, a main story; for information that may damage Romney, it’s a small link in the corner.

Drudge will highlight other Republicans to the extent that doing so divides opposition to Romney, or simply zings Obama, but not often otherwise.

(By the way, I don’t think there’s anything substantively wrong with Romney’s income, but that’s not the same as considering the political impact — how others will demagogue — that money. On the merits, see Bain’s Not Romney’s Weakness, It’s His Strength.)

Over at the Huffington Post, the story’s all about how wealthy Romney is, albeit with some mention of his significant charitable contributions. He’s not even an American — it’s Swiss Mitt.

I still think Romney will be the GOP nominee; if he should not be, one would have to reassess the fall elections, as another GOP nominee from this field would be a decided underdog.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.24.12

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Good morning.

For Whitewater, it’s a day of gradual clearing with a high of twenty-six. For Washington, awaiting Pres. Obama’s State of the Union address at 8 PM CT, it’s a mostly sunny day with a high of fifty-five. The White House website will stream an enhanced broadcast of the address, with charts and supporting documentation.

In Whitewater, the Urban Forestry commission meets at 4:15 PM, and the Community Development Authority at 5 PM.

The Wisconsin Historical Society recalls that on this day in 1960, rural residents confronted a

Crisis of Morals in Green County

On this date representatives of civic and service organizations, schools and churches met in Monroe to discuss the “crisis of morals” in Green County, where the number of unwed mothers increased to 40 in 1959. [Source: Janesville Gazette]

After a quick look a map, I can see that Green County’s still shown, so my best guess would be that residents came through all this well enough.

Just in time for elections in America, scientists abroad have a model for detecting election fraud. Rachel Ehrenberg of Science News reports that

The researchers examined voter turnout and votes received by the winning party for recent parliamentary elections in Russia, Austria, Finland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom and for presidential elections in Uganda and the United States. Graphing the relationship between turnout and votes for the winner revealed unusual peaks in the data for the elections in Russia and Uganda — a signature of funny business, the scientists contend.

Ballot stuffing best explains the data, says study coauthor Peter Klimek, a complex systems scientist at the Medical University of Vienna.

“Of course, this is a statistical detection technique, not conclusive proof,” says Klimek, who, along with Stefan Thurner and other University of Vienna colleagues, reported the analysis online January 15 at arXiv.org. But the numbers need explaining, “and nothing explains them as cleanly as the fraud hypothesis,” Klimek says.

Thousands of precincts in Russia and districts in Uganda reported 100 percent voter turnout with 100 percent of those votes for the winning party, the researchers found. Graph these data various ways and the fraud signature pops out, notes Klimek. Plotting votes for the winner against voter turnout, for example, reveals a line that slopes off into a plateau for most countries, but for Russia and Uganda those lines keep climbing right off the graph.

Google’s puzzle for today is an historical one: “If you were being served terrapin stew at a historic presidential inaugural ball, in what government building would you be?”

For your own dish, consider a recipe for Chesapeake Terrapin Stew from reciperascal.com.

Government Spending, Libertarians, Poverty

How Selfish Politicians Use the Poor or Children to Protect Wasteful Programs that Have Nothing to Do with the Poor or Children

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It’s a cruel game to defend government spending on the well-fed with the lament that spending cuts must be stopped, lest the poor and vulnerable suffer.

The poor and vulnerable will not suffer in a society that reduces spending on corporate welfare, sham job-creation programs, so-called business-development grants, and spending on weapons so expensive and impractical that the military can afford to build only a few (and dare not risk a one).

These are not programs for the poor — they’re programs for well-connected friends, favored businesses, and influential military contractors.

The politicians who feed friends on the slop of Big Government care about the vulnerable simply as a talking point, a defense of other business as usual.

The national Libertarian Party highlights this selfish tactic in this week’s message (“Libertarians propose rolling back the most-needed services last – after getting government out of the way so that voluntary solutions can take their place.”)

(For more about how libertarians will support transitional spending for the vulnerable and destitute, see On Poverty Spending)

Public Records, University

Polling and Public Records

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Charles Franklin, a UW-Madison professor and pollster is now visiting at Marquette. He’ll be conducting polls on Wisconsin politics (recall, other topics) while a visiting professor.

Embedded below is a brief interview of Franklin, conducted last week.


Watch Polling specialist assesses recall movement on PBS. See more from Here and Now.

Writing at Fighting Bob, in a post entitled “Open records open minds,” blogger-lawyer Ed Garvey wonders if Franklin’s visiting professorship at Marquette will allow Franklin to leak polling data to Team Walker. Garvey thinks that, if Franklin were at UW-Madison (or on sabbatical from UW-Madison), then his polling data would be subject to an open records request (as it would not be at private Marquette):

….if he [Franklin] is on sabbatical and is being paid by UW I would argue that his polling information is a public record. Possibly he came to the same conclusion so someone switched it from sabbatical to visiting professor. I wonder who is paying him? I don’t know, but will ask and report to you. Wisconsin voters should have all the information they can get. Time for Marquette to open the books.

Garvey’s argument is unpersuasive. There’s no evidence that Franklin will leak any data to the Walker campaign. Second, much of Franklin’s polling data will be — as is common with many polls — publicly available, anyway. Garvey’s argument really assumes that (1) Franklin would publish results without underlying data on survey size, etc., or (2) would conceal from the public some questions entirely (passing that information along to Gov. Walker’s campaign). The first would reduce the poll’s credibility, and the second would be difficult for anyone at a large university — public or private — to conceal. I’ve no reason to think Franklin is so inclined.

Even for polling from the public UW-Madison, one can guess UW-Madison would argue that the law should recognize that some social science data were exempt from the Public Records Law (Wis. Stat. 19.31-19.39). At the very least, a university would be sure to object to records-access while data collection was ongoing, and during analysis. To do otherwise would be to leave academics’ research exposed before a study concluded.

Since timeliness matters so greatly for campaign polling, public-records access to data after an election would have historical value, but would come too late to alleviate someone’s immediate (unsupported) concerns about an election advantage for Team Walker.

In any event, Franklin will only be one of several pollsters (beyond the campaigns) surveying Wisconsinites closely this year. more >>