'Tis the season...for inflated Wisconsin job numbers

In a shocking development, Wisconsin had big job gains in November, with a seasonally-adjusted 10,600 jobs added for the month, wiping out most of the job losses that had accumulated since May. In fact, the only thing more shocking than the good job news was finding out that the greatest Badger ever has been living a double life as a $600 an hour call girl in Vegas in between motivational speeches (I find that story kinda cool, actually).

But the "good" jobs news also illustrates an interesting trend that has hit the state since the Great Recession hit 5 years ago, and has been continued to be true in the Age of Fitzwalkerstan.

As you can see, the cold-weather months of October through February have generally done better than warm-weather months when it comes to seasonally-adjusted jobs figures, and seasonal adjustments seem to be a big reason why. On a raw-number (non-seasonally adjusted) basis, we usually start losing jobs after June, gain a few back in September and October as school starts up, and then in December and January, a lot of jobs go away, with the numbers slowly re-building back around February (2009 is the obvious exception with the economy falling apart).

And the seasonal adjustments is part of the reason behind these "huge" job gains in November, as the seasonally-adjusted gain is a lot more than the actual gain.

Wisconsin November 2012 job stats
Seasonally-adjusted +10,300 private, +10,600 all
Non-seasonal adjust. -600 private, +3,100 all

And the breakdown by category also reflects this

Construction -4,300 n.s.a = +1,000 s.a.
Manufacturing +800 n.s.a = +2,800 s.a.
Trade (retail) +12,000 n.s.a = +1,100 s.a
Prof./Bus Services -1,500 n.s.a = +1,500 s.a.
Leisure/ Hospitality -6,400 n.s.a = +2,400 s.a.
Government +3,700 n.s.a = +300 s.a.

So nothing too great there, it just means there were less people hired that couldn't get laid off later. The one exception is the trade/ retail sector, which reflects the increased hiring for Holiday shopping season, and I'd give a whole lot more credit to a growing national economy (with GDP revised up to 3.1% growth for 3rd Quarter today) than anything going on particular to Wisconsin.

Now some of this may be silly to point out, and any seasonally-adjusted gain of 10,600 jobs in a month is good economic news. But it'll be interesting to see if the Walker Administration tries to hang its hat on these numbers, because here was Scotty this week telling the Appleton Post-Crescent that non-seasonally adjusted numbers are the ones that matter.

Walker took issue with a recent published report that the state has seen a net gain of just 25,000 jobs, saying “the raw data shows” that 86,000 jobs were created through June. (PolitiFact Wisconsin examined Walker’s job-numbers claim and rated it “Pants on Fire.”) And I concurred with PolitiFact's assessment

Well, the "raw data" shows that we lost 600 private sector jobs in November as well, Governor. But I won't hold that against you, because I understand the concept of seasonal adjustments in Wisconsin. And as Daily Kos writer GeoffT reminds us, Scott Walker used to understand seasonal adjustments as well.

[Jim] Doyle, January 17th 2006: "we created more than 140,000 new jobs"
Walker, January 19th 2006: "Doyle was using number that had not been seasonally adjusted; the actual number is just under 70,000 new jobs" i.e. Doyle had inflated his jobs figures by 100% by using seasonally-unadjusted numbers.....

Since Walker said of these claims of Doyle's "No One Can Beat the World Champion Lies Jim Doyle Told Tuesday Night" and that they were worthy of entry to for the Burlington Liars' Club World Championship Liars' Competition, I trust that Walker will be submitting his own, even greater whoppers to the competition this year.

And you can bet one of them will involve the Walker folks claiming that Wisconsin is "turning the corner" and that it's finally "working." Given that November's job "gains" due to lower-than-normal layoffs are a sort of tallest midget contest, I wouldn't really bet on that.

WEDC Fail- another "Fire, Ready, Aim" story

The last couple of days have shown us that the disaster known as the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) was even worse than we already knew. And we knew it was really bad.

An audit of WEDC's accounting systems shows some of the brutal oversights in the first year of the new organization.

Condition: During the year the Corporation did not maintain a control receivable account on the general ledger to record loan activity. As a result, basic internal accounting controls over loans were not in place during the year. Loan activity was recorded in a separate software system to monitor collections and balances of individual loans. However, this system was not systematically compared to loan disbursements and payments recorded in the general ledger. In addition, loan agreements did not always contain approved staff or performance reviews.

Cause: The necessary control accounts were not established in the Corporation’s general ledger and procedures were not established to provide controls over loan monitoring.

Effect: Loan balances at year end were not fairly stated on the general ledger. Extensive effort was required at year end to establish control accounts, determine balances and compare the balances to the separate software system. Because controls were not in place during the year, adequate follow up on delinquent loans did not always occur.

And there are a whole lot of deliquent loans, up to $19 million of them that state taxpayers may never get a penny back on. The audit also showed that many accounting entries are not reviewed or approved by another person, because WEDC "did not have adequate policies and procedures in place," which could lead to "intentional improper recording, misstated general ledger balances, and potentially conceal fraud." Oh, and about 1/4 of credit card transactions by WEDC personnel were never approved, because they never had any procedures in place to handle such transactions.

Why is there such a mess? A report from Schenck SC tells the reason, as mentioned in Monday's Journal-Sentinel article on WEDC.

The Schenck audit found that many of the problems were because the WEDC lost dozens of employees - officials have put the number at roughly half - during the agency's transition from the former state Department of Commerce to the new agency.

As a result, the agency had safeguards in place for its payroll and operating expenses but lacked those controls over its other financial dealings.

"Financial transactions were either not recorded or improperly recorded throughout the year and went undetected by personnel of the corporation," the report notes....

WEDC's board will now receive a monthly report including an income statement and balance sheet - items that hadn't been provided until now.

You mean hastily throwing together this new organization in a matter of months without input from the former Department of Commerce on how their system worked has a lot of kinks to work out? No freaking way.

And it's not like this is the first time a Walker policy move has backfired and caused more problems than existed before. As I wrote several months ago "Fire, Ready, Aim" is a common Walker implementation strategy. This includes turning down the Milwaukee-to-Minneapolis train money that has cost state taxpayers millions in additional costs, and partisan attempts to install voter ID and end same-day registration, which could end up costing taxpayers millions more and would lead to numerous lawsuits due to the laws being illegally written.

Oh, and need I also remind you of the constantly-changing and confusing concealed-carry rules, or the Family Care fiasco where the Obama Administration forced Walker's DHS to stop limiting enrollees, (and the Walker folks lied about the reason they had to lift the cap), And of course, the grandaddy of all Walker "act first, think later" moves: the Wacky-hut screw-up in Milwaukee County, when Walker improperly privatized Milwaukee County security to a contributor, and then was forced to give County deputies their jobs back, at a much higher cost to county taxpayers.

You get the idea our governor isn't much of a details or implementation guy? He just whacks at some issue, usually causing more damage in the process, making it harder to fix, perhaps to the point of no return. Which means the services involved have to be cut back and/or sold off, probably to some private industry that stands to make a good profit off the deal.

WAIT A MINUTE- That's exactly the plan, isn't it? FUBAR services and sell them off to campaign contributors, who use some of the profits to fund your election campaigns. Not a bad situation if you're in on the deal, but it sure sucks if you're the other 99% of us.

"100,000 jobs gained"? Uhh, not quite Governor

Well, another week, another instance of our fair governor being caught in a lie about jobs numbers. The lie from Gov. Walker came from a workforce development event in Walkershaw County where he claimed that the state had added "just under 100,000 jobs" since he took office at the start of 2011. Which is interesting, since the only time we had previously seen "100,000 jobs" mentioned with Wisconsin under Walker had been in figuring the Walker jobs gap, which has now reached 6 figures.

So where did Walker's claim come from? Apparently he used the December 2010 figures from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), and then compared the number to the June 2012 numbers. If you do that, there is an addition of around 86,500 private sector jobs, if you look at the past history of the survey, and then compare it to the June 2012 figure that the Walker DWD claimed on Page 3 of the most recent state jobs figures.

But not surprisingly, Walker's claim of big job gains is untrue in fact, and disgustingly deceptive on top of that. We know Walker and his DWD can deceive about the QCEW survey, as Walker infamously did before the recall election, inflating the numbers and falsely claiming the BLS had confirmed the DWD's figures. The April-June 2012 numbers for Wisconsin have not been confirmed by the BLS, and will not be printed until the end of this month. And the DWD figures don't give a comparison to other states that also report on the QCEW. This is important, as the last report, showed Wisconsin to have the worst job growth in the Midwest over the previous 12 months measured.

Bad enough that Walker's trying to do this on preliminary data, but there's an even more cynical side to this "100,000 jobs" line. The QCEW doesn't adjust for seasonal changes in employment, and just gives unadjusted, total figures. Well, not surprisingly, there are more jobs in June in Wisconsin than there are in December, because of Summer tourism jobs, construction, and other related seasonal work. The QCEW shows that there typically is an increase of around 50,000 jobs from December to January when there is an expanding economy in Wisconsin.

So 86,500 over 18 months isn't all that impressive when you look at it that way. The Walker folks know this, but think you or the media won't look that closely at the reality. The real way to look at the QCEW is to look at the 12-month, year-over-year figures, to take out the effect of seasonal increaes. And when you do that, the first year of Fitzwalkerstan falls short of the last year of the Doyle-Dem budget of 2010-2011. I'll even give Scotty and co the benefit of the doubt and accept their preliminary figures for 2ndQ 2012 at face value.

Private sector job change, Wisconsin
Dec. 2009-Dec. 2010 +33,658
Dec. 2010-Dec. 2011 +29,800 (DOWN 11.5%)

June 2010-June 2011 +39,909
June 2011-June 2012 +25,379 (DOWN 36.4%)

So in both cases, there has been a significant SLOWDOWN in Wisconsin job growth under the Walker/WisGOP policies compared to the Doyle/Dem budget they inherited. Not exactly something you'd think you'd be bragging about, or trying to bring attention to. But the Walker Administration is either so simple-minded or cynical that they think they can just throw out these claims, and people will think that "it's working."

Well it's not working, both in succeeding in growing Wisconsin's economy, and in the Walker folks tricking people. Even the pro-Walker Journal-Sentinel Politifact, which goes out of its way to give Walker the benefit of the doubt on his constant deceptions, couldn't let this one go by. They ruled Walker's claim of 100,000 new jobs to be a "pants-on-fire" lie, and added that Walker violated his own administration's complaints that you shouldn't combine full-year and partial-year numbers on the QCEW because of the seasonal adjustments that happen up here.

I mean, if the Journal-Sentinel is calling out a Walker lie, you know it's bad. But you can bet they'll try to keep on spinning and lying, especially as the new November jobs numbers get released next week. Given the recent increase in unemployment claims, another month of Wisconsin job losses is quite possible, and so I absolutely anticipate some kind of misdirection or misreporting of numbers to try to deflect from the continual failures of Scott Walker's economic policies.

A few stats on guns in the U.S.

I'll admit I'm no major fan of guns in general, and I choose not to own one. But I'd rather give you some interesting numbers on gun violence in America, and have you figure out what it means (although I may give you some tips).

First, was an article from Richard Florida, done in the wake of the Gabby Giffords shooting in January 2011. It showed which states have more gun deaths, and which have less, and what types of demographics and correlations come in through these stats. Granted, this does not take into account the GOP governors and legislatures in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and other places that have loosened restrictions on guns in the last 2 year, but it does show where we were beforehand. Here's a neat graph from that article, with positive numbers indicating places with a higher amount of gun crime, and negative numbers showing lower.

It's not an exact correlation, but red states, poorer states, and places with looser gun restrictions tend to have more gun deaths, while blue states, places with more college graduates, and states with more gun restrictions tend to have fewer gun deaths. None of these correlations should be that surprising (we already know that red states have higher poverty and lower levels of education, for example), but it's remarkable how strong these correlations are.

I'll also forward you to a great rundown by Ezra Klein titled "Twelve facts about guns and mass shooting in the United States." Among the many amazing stats in this piece, they include:

1. The vast majority of mass killings are by weapons that were obtained legally.
2. 15 of the world's 25 largest mass shootings in the last 50 years have been in the U.S., and half of the U.S.'s 12 largest shootings have been in the last 6 years.
3. As these next 2 graphs show, the U.S. has seen a lower murder rate over the last 35 years, but it's still a whole lot higher than the rest of the civilized, OECD world, and the (pro-GOP and gun-allowing) South is by far the most violent part of the country over the last 10 years.

4. It also releases polling on the subject of guns, and while more people have been answering the generic question of "should gun controls be more strict, less strict, or kept as they are," with "keep the same or loosen" (by 54-44 in 2010), when the question is broken down to specific issues, wanting more restrictions on guns and the people who own them becomes a clear majority. In fact, the NRA position is the majority one only when it comes to limiting the amount of guns an individual can own.

It reminds me of the Obamacare debate, where people claimed they "disapproved" of Obamacare, but backed much of the provisions that were in Obamacare. And it explains why the NRA types are going out of their way to not bring up the question of "Should certain people not have handguns?" or have people ask "Should Glocks and .223 rifles be legal for anyone to buy (as was the case in Connecticut)?", because that's a losing argument for them.

So watch as the NRA and spineless politicians will try to turn this issue into a straw man of "well they just want to ban guns" (if they bring it up at all). That tatic is GARBAGE. Most people like me don't want to ban handguns or keep people from having them in their homes if they're law-abiding citizens that show they can handle the responsibility. But stats and polls clearly show that we live in a violent country that has seen a recent increase of people deciding to use guns to take out large amounts of others on their way off this earth.

The bottom line is that mass shootings are now at a point that they are no longer random, isolated incidents, but becoming a more regular pattern, much like with climate change and extreme weather events over the last decade. And these outcomes lead to SERIOUS PROBLEMS THAT MUST BE DEALT WITH, even if the answers make a few people uncomfortable and a few businesses lose a bit of money along the way. It is also true that certain demographics and places being more susceptible to violence than others, so maybe we should look to what policies work and what don't.

But the one thing we cannot do any longer is ignore these stats, and ignore the conclusions that can be drawn from them.

12/12/12 and CT shootings show country at crossroads

I'm still thinking about the mass shooting at a Connectivcut elementary school that ended up with 28 people dead, my reaction isn't sadness or fear. It's disgust and a bit of anger. Now maybe some of this is because I don't have kids (although I have neices and nephews of this age), but mainly it's because I'm tired of these mass shootings, and I'm especially tired that nothing seems to be done in the wake of them. It feels like I wrote this same article after the Sikh Temple shootings in Oak Creek in August, and the the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and several other in Tucson in January 2011.

And yet we do next to nothing about the base causes of these horrible crimes- the lack of treatment of mental illness, particularly in young adults (heck, Scott Walker just said yesterday the Milwaukee County Mental Health Center was "old and busted"....after his own cost-cutting negligence helped lead to the busting), and the availability of guns for these unstable people to "solve" their problems and take out their frustrations in the most horrible of ways.

Now contrast this to another event on the East Coast that happened 2 days prior to the Connecticut shooting, when huge musical acts donated their time to perform at the 12/12/12 concert in New York City, and raised tens of millions for victims of Hurriance Sandy. This is the good side of America, where we recognize people that have been beset by hard times through no fault of their own, and we come together to help those individuals through the tought times. We understand that these awful circumstances could happen to anyone, and that everyone can't make it on their own through those situations.

So how does this coexist with a country where a teacher and mother of 2 grown kids reportedly had "a Glock and a Sig Sauer, both pistols, and a .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle" in her suburban Connecticut house- weapons that her mentally ill son used to kill elementary school kids and teachers, along with his mother and himself. What possesses someone to be in such a state of fear for their safety to have to buy high-powered guns that serve no purpose except to intimidate and kill? Especially in a country where a lot of us also believe in taking care of our own and that our whole is better than the sum of our parts?

The late great Bill Hicks accurately described this conflict in 1993 with a not-so-funny sign-off on his HBO special.



Sounds like he could do that bit today, doesn't it? That's probably the saddest part of it all - a lot of people in a lot of parts of the country don't seem to have learned much in the 20 years since I got out of high school. Which is why we have to crash their bubbles, and yes, we have to talk about uncomfortable things like gun violence, and inequality in a country that talks a big game, and has the capability to live up to it, but far too often falls short.

Choose wisely, folks.

Walker's GB FAIL on John Doe

A few sources have already weighed on this fail of a Governor Walker interview, including Jud Lounsbury's original post at Uppity Wisconsin and Capper's always-entertaining take at Cognitive Dissidence. Take a look at the interview, and I'll follow up with a few questions and points of my own.



1. My first question is this. After 2 years of investigation, you can't come up with a better answer than "I dunno, it wasn't me, and there are a lot of people under me as an executive?" Doesn't that make you unfit for office on that alone, since you apparently have no administrative skills?

  But then I have some more particular questions, and it turns out that maybe Walker's admin skills aren't so bad. Maybe there's a pattern to the "incompetence."  

2. You see Scotty, these aren't exactly low-level bureaucrats who went rogue. Keith Gilkes was a key member of your campaign team, and you appointed him as your Chief of Staff after you were elected Governor in 2010.  (Gilkes ended up being the guy who said "Mr. Walker, it's David Koch on Line 1.") You were copied in on emails where Gilkes ordered your County Executive staff to cover up items related to the O'Donnell Parking garage disaster, and Gilkes edited an August editorial from Walker's director of Health and Human Services discussing issues at the county's deficient mental health facility.

You personally signed off on the hiring of Kelly Rindfleisch as Deputy Chief of Staff in 2010, without then-Chief of Staff Tom Nardelli knowing about it. Tim Russell served in a number of positions under you, including the Deputy Chief of Staff job that Rindfleisch later took, and also was your county's housing director while simultaneously serving as NASCAR pit crew guy while you did your Air Tran-sponsored motorcycle rides around the state.



Tim Russell is also the guy you turned to when Wink got caught posting on Journal-Sentinel websites in May 2010, and said "we cannot afford another story like this one." Russell then got Rindfleisch to put the router away, despite not having any official authority over her.

These weren't independent civil servants who you wouldn't know or have no contact with. They were trusted confidants who you personally chose to hire. And despite their sketchy behavior, you never chose to get rid of them (Russell did get fired by the Milwaukee County Executive, as Lee Holloway shitcanned him immediately after taking over for Walker in 2010). 

3. On a related note, if you have no tolerance for corruption, why are you keeping Brett Davis on the job as the state's top Administrator of the Medicaid program, when Rindfleisch was convicted of working on Davis's Lieutenant Governor campaign while she was supposed to be working for you in Milwaukee County?  Davis clearly knew about Rindfleisch's illegal work, and Rindfleisch admitted in her criminal complaint that "half of her job" was working on the campaign for Davis and Walker.

4. In the interview, Walker's still clinging to the BS about "I was the guy who ordered the investigation into missing funds" Just stop it. We know you only ordered Nardelli to investigate when Nardelli went into your office noted the money missing in 2008 and 2009 (as shown in the Kavanaugh criminal complaint), and the thefts couldn't be hidden any further. Heck,  you allowed the now-convicted Tim Russell and Kevin Kavanuagh to be part of Operation Freedom all the way through 2010.  Much like with Brett Davis, you clearly didn't mind keeping ol' Kev around, despite being under investigation for missing funds at the time. Why?

5. And why are so many of these Walkergate criminals connected to the Walker campaign event known as Operation Freedom? Kavanaugh, Darlene Wink, Tim Russell, and Kelly Rindfleisch all took their turns handling this allegedly non-partisan "Support the Troops" event, and all have now been convicted for acting illegally while on the job. In fact, the only time it seems that Operation Freedom was handled on the up-and-up was when Walker had to give it over to the American Legion in 2009 after Kavanaugh was first suspected of stealing funds. And as Page 4 of the Russell criminal complaint  points out,

Due to alleged financial mismanagement, in about 2009, Operation Freedom donations were entrusted to the Alonzo Cudworth American Legion Post. While by all reports thge Cudworth Post discharged their financial duties in exemplary fashion, in October 2009, then County Executive Scott Walker transferred the Operation Freedom funds - some $19,000 - to HGPS, the corporation controlled by Tim Russell.
         Russell actively operated the HGPS entity for the purpose of raising funds for Operation Freedom during 2010. This included having County employees process donation payments for ultimate deposit in an HGPS account that Russell controlled.

And we know that Russell funneled that money not only to himself, but also to pay for "Walker for Governor" websites and to fly to Atlanta to meet with Herman Cain as well as "Smoking Man" Mark Block. Block is closely linked with Walker and the Wisconsin version of the Koch-funded Astroturf group Americans for Prosperity, and took credit for Walker and WisGOP's wins in 2010 through the use of Tea Party organizing. If you think Russell was acting alone on these moves....well, you might be stupid enough to still Stand with Walker.

6. My last question- Why is it some TV guy in Green Bay that has to be the one to bring up these issues to Walker? Where are the Milwaukee and Madison media when it comes to asking these legitmate questions on judgment and why so many of Walker's appointees end up crooks? This is entry-level journalism that far too few of our media members refuse to make.

But Walker's and Gilkes's lame reactions to the people that make these obvious Walkergate connnections leads me to conclude one thing.

The tenuous WisGOP grip on power

Good release from the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, which shows the votes by district in November 2012 for Wisconsin when it came to Congress, the State Senate, and the State Assembly. This report shows that Democrats got a majority of the votes for Congress, State Senate, and State Assembly in races, but Republicans got a majority of seats due to redistricting leading to Republicans taking more marginal seats. While not entirely accurate (there are Dem wins in the City of Racine and Kenosha that are not there), if you look at these maps, it's instructive to compare them with the Presidential red-and-blue maps from the same November elections.

  
        The thing that grabs me about comparing this map to the State Assembly map is how Southwestern Wisconsin went entirely for President Obama in the general election, but much of its Assembly seats are held by Republicans. Also interesting is that many of those same areas didn't have State Senate elections this November, but will in 2014. These would be areas I'd target if I were the Dems in 2014, with the extra bonus of knowing that many of these counties were carried by Scott Walker in the recall election, and could easily flip over to a Dem Governor candidate.

    And as I mentioned before,  many of those red counties won by Romney in northeastern Wisconsin were very close, as the finalized presidential numbers show.

  Northeast Wisconsin results
 Door Co.- Obama 53-46
Winnebago Co.- Obama 51-47
Brown County- Romney 50-48
Outagamie Co.-Romney 50-48
Manitowoc Co.- Romney 51-48
Kewaunee Co.- Romney 52-47

Despite the closeness of the presidential election, these areas are almost entirely represented by Republicans in the State Legislature and in Congress, and almost all went for Walker by 20 or more points last Summer. And much like in Southwestern Wisconsin, many of these areas did not have State Senate elections this year in Republican-held seats, including districts that have 50-50 counties like Door, Manitowoc, Kewaunee, and Outagamie.

   So let's drill down to the state elections, and look at the closest Assembly races from November 2012. We'll list all winners that got less than 60% of vote.

   Close Assembly races 2012 
  District 72- GOP- 50.2-49.8
  District 70- Dem 50.2-49.7 
  District 1- GOP 51-49
  District 26- GOP 51-49 
  District 75- Dem 51-49
  District 93- GOP 51-49
  District 50- GOP 50-47
  District 85- Dem 50-46
  District 51- GOP 52-48
  District 68- GOP 52-48
  District 88- GOP 52-47
  District 62- GOP 53-47
  District 67- GOP 53-47
  District 37- GOP 54-46 (Assembly flips to Dem)
  District 49- GOP 54-46
  District 35- GOP 53-42
 District 86- GOP 56-44
District 28- GOP 56-44
District 29- GOP 56-44
District 30- GOP 56-44 
District 61- GOP 56-44
District 4- GOP 56-44
District 5- GOP 56-44
District 31- GOP 57-43
District 42- GOP 57-43
District 43- Dem 58-42
District 56 GOP 58-42
District 41- GOP 58-42
District 25- GOP 58-42
District 63- GOP 58-42
District 15- GOP 58-42
District 20- Dem 58-42
District 27- GOP 58-42
District 32- GOP 57-40 
District 74- Dem 59-41
District 2- GOP 59-41
District 14- GOP 59-41
District 21- GOP 59-41
District 36- GOP 59-41
District 87- GOP 59-41
District 89- GOP 59-41
District 6- GOP 59-40
District 3- GOP 58-38
District 38- GOP 59-39
District 34- GOP 57-36
       
   The 8 closest races are relatively evenly distributed, with 5 Republicans and 3 Democrats winning. But then you'll notice Republicans won the next 17 CLOSEST RACES (margin of victory between 4 and 16 points), and if the Dems merely flipped every race that was within 10% in November, they would be in the majority in the Assembly. These results also illustrate how the GOP redistricted in order to keep their big advantage in the state Legislature, making a huge amount of 60-40 type districts and dumping Dems into largely safe seats. 33 of the Dems' 39 seats in the Assembly were won with at least 60% of the vote, vs. 21 of the GOP's 60 seats. If there is a Dem wave, it is very likely that it would wash out a huge amount of Republicans, while the GOPs can't gain much more than they already have.

   Same goes for the Senate. Because redistricting happened since the current Senators were put into office, let's look at the 17 Senate seats that'll be up in 2014, and see which ones could be toss-ups. I'll also include the current Senator's incumbent party.

  Close Senate races
  District 1- GOP inc. 3 of 3 close (All GOP)
  District 3- Dem inc.  0 of 3 close
  District 5- GOP inc. 2 of 3 close (All GOP)
  District 7- Dem inc. 2 of 3 close (1 Dem, 1 GOP)
  District 9- GOP inc. 3 of 3 close (All GOP)
  District 11- GOP inc. 2 of 3 close (All GOP)
  District 13- GOP inc. 2 of 3 close (All GOP)
  District 15- Dem inc. 1 of 3 close (1 Dem)
  District 17- GOP inc. 3 of 3 close (All GOP)
  District 19- GOP inc. 1 of 3 close (GOP)
  District 21- Dem inc. 3 of 3 close  (All GOP)
  District 23- GOP inc. 2 of 3 close (All GOP)
  District 25- Dem inc. 2 of 3 close (All Dem)
  District 27- Dem inc. 0 of 3 close
  District 29- GOP inc. 3 of 3 close (2 GOP, 1 Dem)
  District 31- Dem inc. 1 of 3 close (1 GOP)
  District 33- GOP inc. 0 of 3 close

   So we have 30 close Assembly races in districts where there will be State Senate elections in 2014. And in those Assembly races, the Republicans went 25-5! So the GOP will have to spend a lot of time and money propping up vulerable incumbents for both Senate and Assembly in the same communities. If the GOP overreaches or is stained by Walkergate corruption and failures, it is very easy to see where the state sweeps back to the Dems in 2014, and not just in the Governor's mansion or in the other state offices like Attorney General or Treasurer. Remember, there's no U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin for 2014 either, so it'll be the House along with Walker and the WisGOPs at the top of the ticket and the top of the media's attention, which means state-level politicians have fewer places to hide from scrutiny (like they did this November).

   And if I'm the Dems, I get put in front and start being the party of workers and clean elections, because the opportunity is right there. But it takes starting NOW, and planting the seed in voters' heads, before the Koch/ Bradley-funded propaganda overwhelms the bystanders. Because as you see here, it'll take GOP money going to a whole lot of places in the state to prop up their many vulnerable legislators, while Dems don't need to worry about spreading themselves too thin, because there aren't a lot of new places the GOP can go to win.

I'd encourage any Republicans with a sense of pragmatism (if they still exist) to heed these words, and not try any radical Bagger crap like ending same-day registration or trying to install right-to-freeload legislation or pass crazy abortion bills. Your lead isn't as strong as you might think, and it won't take much to have a pissed-off public turn on you, and end the Age of Fitzwalkerstan in a dramatic way.

   So go ahead, WisGOP. I dare you to try to board the crazy train one more time. Because November's numbers show you have a really good chance of derailing and losing power with a public that isn't automatically going to buy what you're trying to sell (well, outside of the 262 of course).

  Late edit: here's the Journal-Sentinel's Craig Gilbert with an excellent breakdown of the presidential race vote by Congressional and State Senate district, and also explaining how 60 of 99 State Assembly districts skewed more Republican than the state's vote as whole. With most of those 60 districts are within 10% of the overall vote, and with Obama winning by nearly 7, that means the GOP has little room to spare if a Dem wave hit the Assembly.