Favorites were winning, but they weren't always covering the spread. Underdogs went 8-8 against the spread Friday and were 20-12 against the spread over the first two full days of the tournament.
Thursday was huge. One sportsbook said Thursday was its biggest single-day win in memory.
"Epic day, absolutely," Jay Rood, vice president of MGM race and sports, said of Thursday. "Tough day for the players coupled with the fact the books did well Wednesday, too."
"Yesterday was amazing," Dave Pemberton, director of specialty games for Caesars Entertainment, added Friday night....
The betting public isn't at its most sophisticated in March, when spring break collides with the NCAA tournament in Las Vegas. The public normally fancies the favorites and parlays at long odds. When underdogs go on runs, like they did Thursday, the books win big.
On the flip side, Purdum notes that after the crazy afternoon session on Thursday, the tournament hasn't had as much Madness in terms of who has advanced, with the Vegas favorites winning 25 of the last 26 games that have gone final. But as Purdum notes, lots of covers by underdogs who lost (such as we saw in the Badgers' game, who failed to cover when their scrubs turned the ball over twice in the final minute against Coastal Carolina), which usually is a big winner for the books
As for my bracket, lousy first day (like many people), and pretty good second day. Only missed 1 game and still have 14 of my Sweet 16 and all of my Final Four around. I don't have any cash on it so far, and Bucky cruised yesterday. Now I'm just recovering and getting ready to gear it up again this evening (although having 6 games after 5pm on Saturday and Sunday is kind of BS).
This is a great interview with State Senator Kathleen Vinehout on Wisconsin Eye, talking about the upcoming election for a new Chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and what the Dems have to do to win state elections in the near future.
The good stuff starts around 7:30, where Vinehout starts calling out the "consolidation of power" within the top reaches of the DPW. She clearly despises the Mike Tate/Jason Rae wing of the party (the pro-corporate, consultant-driven group, based mostly out of Milwaukee). She point-blank says "We cannot win statewide just by turning out Madison and Milwaukee." And I think Vinehout's right. It's no coincidence that Barack Obama won many more counties in 2012 than Tom Barrett did in 2010 and 2012, and Mary Burke did in 2014.
Here's the red-blue map of Wisconsin for Obama vs. Romney in 2012.
Now compare that to the 2014 governor's race with Scott Walker and Mary Burke.
Notice the number of counties in Western Wisconsin that shift from blue to red, and how much deeper the red gets in Northeast Wisconsin. This is where the Party has badly fallen down, and it's even worse when combined with the large GOP majorities that exist in the Legislature today because of this voting pattern.
It's interesting that Vinehout openly says that she feels she was a better candidate than Mary Burke for governor, and would have run if not for her auto accident that messed up her arm in late 2013. Around 20:30, she starts talking about how the Democratic Party needs to be built from the bottom-up, and that there are big-money interests that are trying to control the party and its direction, and around 24:30, Vinehout explains why Scott Walker won Governor's elections in her home county, despite the top issues being "rural schools, health care, and agriculture...and the environment," issues that Walker is weak on compared to what the people in those communities believe in (to say the least).
"What we have is a disconnect between the will of the people and their voting patterns. We can see that in all the referenda that passed around the state, people want us to take the [expanded] Medicaid money, they want us to cover the poor, they certainly want us to help the frail elderly and disabled like Scott Walker's not - he's privatizing Family Care and doing away with the IRIS program. But people want their rural schools, we can see that in referenda after referenda has been passed.
So how is it that we change this? I believe the Democrats have an obligation to reach out to the people that need information to square their opinions with how they're voting. I cannot fault the people in Buffalo County for voting against what they feel are their own values and what they care about if they don't have the information. And I hear so many people from Madison and Milwaukee say "Oh my God, those people are just voting against their own interests." Hey, let's talk about why.
-State Sen. Kathleen Vinehout
And Vinehout goes on to mention that in Western Wisconsin, the Madison-Milwaukee media complex really doesn't sink in, and she describes a "great chasm" of information that doesn't reach people's everyday lives.
While I disagree that the people aren't entirely blameless here (you are ultimately responsible for what you vote for), I agree that the Dems have not done their job in connecting the pro-Dem opinions of the people to Dem politicians. And Dems don't do enough to sell and explain that connection. They could have had a simple message for the 2014 elections that said "If you want Badgercare expanded at lower cost to the taxapayer, and you want your schools and UW System to continue to be funded, vote for Mary Burke." They never explicitly did that, and sat on their backsides and expected people with 20 other priorities in their lives to try to figure it out. And many don't have the time or energy to figure it out, especially in non-presidential years, so they either vote for something they can tangibly know and deal with (guns, property taxes, resentment), or they don't vote at all.
The Dem Party needs to change this outcome, and fast. Certainly this awful Walker budget is a place that can add to engagement and get people willing to hear a new and better direction (take a look at the huge amount of citizens that came out for Budget Hearings in Brillion and Milwaukee this week), and if Dems have any brains, they should be the ones that say "We won't allow this to continue if we're in power." It's not like Scott Walker has a huge base of supporters in the overall electorate- Scotty has never received as many Wisconsin votes in any of his three elections as Mitt Romney did while losing by 7% in 2012, and only once has received more votes than John McCain did in 2008 (and McCain lost by 14%). So while Walker's supporters may be loud (or were), they aren't as many as their yard signs indicate, and it's the Dems' job to get their message out to casual voters and remind them who really shares their values.
Given that Kathleen Vinehout has won 3 elections in swingy territory, and Mike Tate went 0-for-3 in Governor's elections as the Chair of the DPW in office, maybe we should listen to her over Tate or consultant-driven hotshot clones like Jason Rae. I don't know if I'd necessarily follow Vinehout's endorsement of Sheboygan's Martha Lanning for Chair, but I do think it's time for someone with a knowledge of smaller-town Wisconsin to carry the message and organization from the state, because the city-centered, often pro-corporate mentality that has happened to the party in recent years isn't getting the job done.
Was busy watching hoops and drinking with friends yesterday (like all good Americans should on the first weekend of March Madness), so I couldn't chime in with the release of the Quarterly Census on Employment and Wages- the report Scott Walker claimed was the "gold standard" of job numbers because of its more complete sample. Well, this is problem with being as serially deceptive and spinning as Walker, because inevitably your spin comes back to bite you in the ass.
Here's the quick and dirty from yesterday's release.
Wisconsin rankings out of 50 US states Sept 2013- Sept 2014
Private sector job growth: 40th (+1.157%)
Total job growth: 38th (+1.056%)
Private sector average weekly wage growth: 42nd (+1.761%)
Highlights of today's BLS report of state-by-state employment and unemployment estimates (seasonally adjusted), which are each based on monthly surveys, include:
•Wisconsin's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate decline to 5.5 percent in September 2014 from 6.6 percent in September 2013 was statistically significant, and the state's September rate ranked 17th in the country (tied), outperforming four Midwest states.
•Wisconsin ranked third in the Midwest for rate of private sector job growth year-over-year.
•Wisconsin's 12-month gain in total nonfarm jobs ranked ahead of Iowa, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio.
And now we know THOSE LAST TWO CLAIMS WERE PROVEN NOT TO BE TRUE, as the QCEW shows that we were behind every Midwestern state for job growth. I'm not saying Walker's DWD was lying before the election, I'm just saying that the information wasn't yet known. ANd I'm saying, we deserve the right to be skeptical of the alleged runup in jobs reported in Wisconsin over the last 5 months, as Walker tries to take credit for a "Wisconsin turnaround" on the campaign trail, because the last 4 years of Walker's record shows that Wisconsin is still brutally lagging.
I'll have more detail on this report later on, maybe when the hoops dies down a bit. But let's see if a few people start asking real questions about our Governor and his "40th place in the US" job ranking.
EDIT: Here are two updated charts showing the rate of private sector job growth over the last 4 years measured. You can see that Wisconsin's private sector job growth peaked around March 2011- the month that Act 10 was passed. And the trend noticeably started declining around September 2011, as Scott Walker's and WisGOP's first budget took effect.
It's clear that the "tools" that were part of Act 10 aren't near enough to handle Scott Walker's budget cuts, and a huge amount of school district officials testified to that effect to the Joint Finance Committee today in Brillion. These district officials said that Walker's budget is a debilitating blow that comes on top of numerous hits that district funding has taken over the years, and an example of the type of concerns voiced to the JFC members was this testimony from Shawano School District's Business Manager, Louise Fischer.
Using the current budget numbers with zero increase in the revenue limit, Shawano’s structural deficit amounts to over $600,000 for fiscal year 15-16. In addition, the per pupil categorical aid was totally eliminated in year one. This categorical aid was implemented in the last state budget to address the small increase on the revenue limit worksheet given districts then. In a nutshell, our structural deficit ballooned from a difficult $600,000 to an inconceivable $960,000.
As 3/4 of our budget is comprised of personnel costs, it can be assumed ¾ of our budget reductions need to be in personnel. Our administration team compiled a list of potential budget reductions that will impact approximately 25 personnel. I speak for my administrative team when I say the process was gut wrenching when determining whose lives these decisions impact, not only in staff layoffs but in student achievement.
It has been reported the budget in its current form will save the taxpayer $10-15. Honestly, are any of us going to hold this budget, the Governor or you in high regard because it saved us the cost of a Friday night fish fry? This $10 is insignificant to the taxpayer and devastating to a school district. I cannot comprehend how cutting public school funding this deeply benefits anyone.
The voucher system takes money from public schools. My personal contention is private schools, when receiving my taxpayer dollars, need to be held accountable, adhering to all the same standards, including open records that public schools need to adhere to and accept ALL students, no matter their needs, that wish to attend private school.
And they are far from the only red-voting areas who are seeing their schools in major danger of severe cutbacks. The pro-Walker Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel had a long, front-page story this week talking about the numerous struggles around the state, including Walker's own home district in Tosa, and numerous districts across the Baggerland of Waukesha County. And these problems are directly related to Walker's pander decision to restrict state aid increases to property tax relief, alluded to by Ms. Fischer in Shawano, which disallows the schools from using extra funding for services or paying staff.
On top of that, the budget eliminates a special $150 per pupil aid payment that Wisconsin school districts received over the past two years. That appropriation was added by the Legislature in the last budget as a way to give a bump to schools without raising property taxes.
Walker has proposed returning the aid payment in 2016-'17 at $165 per pupil, but over the two years, the net effect is $135 less per pupil than what schools received in the last budget.
"We are very concerned about the lost aid," Wauwatosa Superintendent Phil Ertl said. "We are looking at approximately $900,000 in lost aid this year."
The Waukesha School District is projecting nearly $2 million in lost aid, which would result in a projected $3.7 million deficit for the coming year, officials said. The Oconomowoc Area School District would lose nearly $800,000. Menomonee Falls projects a loss of almost $600,000.
And hate to tell you guys in Waukesha County, but no one's living in Cooney or the Falls due to the swinging night life. So if the schools go downhill, your community becomes a ghost town that can't attract anyone under 50. Maybe you should have thought about that before you voted for Walker based on racist AM radio hate his "low-tax fiscal conservatism."
PS- Well, we definitely know the Walker people didn't listen to the Department of Public Instruction when it came to putting together their budget request for schools, as this expose from PR Watch shows. Is there any doubt these people are working for the scumbags in the voucher lobby, and that they could not care less who or what they leave behind in the process?
We got one of what will be several bits of information on Wisconsin's economy today with the release of the state-by-state jobs numbers by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In addition to the typical updates where we get to compare what all the states did for the last month measured (in this case, January 2015), this particular report was big because it included changes and modifications of job data of the last five years.
Effective with this release, nonfarm payroll estimates for states and metropolitan areas have been revised as a result of annual benchmark processing to reflect 2014 employment counts primarily from the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) (tables 5 and 6), as well as updated seasonal adjustment factors. Not seasonally adjusted data beginning with April 2013 and seasonally adjusted data beginning with January 2010 were subject to revision. Some seasonally adjusted series may have been revised back to 1990.
Private sector Job growth Jan 2011-Jan 2015
Mich +11.17% U.S. +9.55%
Ind. +8.32%
Ohio +8.20%
Minn +6.98%
Iowa +6.45% Wis. +5.92%
Ill. +5.50%
So only the FIBs are keeping us out of last place in the Midwest during the Age of Fitzwalkerstan, and it's well behind the national rate (as indicated by the Walker jobs gap of 83,000). What's even more remarkable is that the four-year record is actually an improvement over where we stood after Walker's first 3 years on the job.
Private Sector Job Growth Jan 2011- Jan 2014
Mich +8.04% U.S. +6.70%
Ind. +5.94%
Ohio +5.76%
Minn +5.72%
Iowa +4.83%
Ill. +4.19% Wis. +4.16%
In fact, we were dead last in job growth until September, when a spurt of growth has put us ahead of Illinois. Todd Milewski of the Capitol Times has a good chart illustrating this information. The percentages are slightly different than what I have, but it's basically the same info, and it's worth mentioning that the last 4 months measured are the only four months that have not been measured and benchmarked to the "gold standard" QCEW report (I'm not saying, I'm just sayin'...).
At the top of the list, let's remember that Michigan, Indiana and Ohio all had massive job losses and double-digit unemployment during the Manufacturing Meltdown part of the Great Recession, and a lot of their growth in the 2010s can be credited to the comeback in those fields during the Obama Recovery. But that also begs the question- "Why isn't manufacturing-based Wisconsin joining in on that growth?" Yes, Wisconsin didn't get hit as badly as those three states in the late 2000s (unemployment topped out at 9.2% in Wisconsin in January 2010 and was 8.0% when Walker took over in Jan 2011), but it's still not an adequate excuse for why we lag so badly. Minnesota and Iowa didn't have close to the losses we had here, but they still found a way to gain more jobs and have significantly lower unemployment than Wisconsin.
So while the overall story isn't too much different than what we knew previously (we've always been last or next-to-last in the Midwest under Walker), it's still fresh evidence that the state has lagged its neighbors when it comes to job creation, under a Governor that promised the state would be "Open for Business." Maybe a few more national reporters could ask Presidential Candidate Walker why his approach has failed to either balance the budget or lead to prosperity, and see what kind of easily-disproven jibberish Scotty might respond with.
Also Monday the Fiscal Bureau, the Legislature's budget office, released one estimate of how healthy the state's finances would be in two years if Walker's 2015-'17 budget is approved as it is written.
The Fiscal Bureau estimated that the governor's proposal would leave the state with a potential $500 million surplus in the 2017-'19 budget — a sharp improvement from the shortfall Walker and GOP legislators faced this year.
Well sure, Jason Stein, there's a structural surplus for the next budget based on current law. But if you spend more than a minute reading the actual LFB document, and it assumes a whole lot of things that lead to that number- items that would be unlikely to actually be passed into law, which artificially makes the balance better look than it really is.
1. The biggest assumption is that $700 million in lapses are built into in each year of the 2017-19 budget, or $1.4 BILLION overall. The 2015-16 budget only assumes $295 million in lapses, a little less than 2%, which is a more typical amount to build into a budget. If we assume $295 million in lapses in each year of the 2017-19 budget, that turns the structural balances in those two years to the following.
2017-18 budget -$121 million
2018-19 budget -$138 million TOTAL DEFICIT $259 million
2. But there's another item that won't stick around, and that's a projected $142 million cut in K-12 school aids for each year of the 2017-19 budget. This would reduce aid levels back to the $150-per-student cut that districts are facing for the next school year, a move that has opened up massive deficits all over the state. You can click right here to see the budget holes that exist in your school district, and compare it to all the other holes that exist around the rest of the state. Do you really believe the WisGOPs in the Legislature want to go through all of those complaints again (if they're even in charge in 2 years, which is getting less likely by the day)? Riiiiight.
I'll be generous, not even count for 2 years of inflation, and assume K-12 school funding is kept flat at the 2016-17 Walker budget levels. Add that to the lower lapses mentioned above, and this turns the budget balance into the following.
2017-18 budget -$263 million
2018-19 budget -$280 million TOTAL DEFICIT $543 million
3. We're not even talking about the Transportation Fund, which has huge amounts of borrowing in this budget leading to added debt service and high ongoing costs for projects if those are approved of in this budget. With no planned increase in gas tax revenues or other sources (the structural deficit document doesn't plan for an added increase in the transfer from the General Fund to the Transportation Fund), where are these added costs going to be paid from? So add those hundreds of million in Transportation Fund deficits to the half a billion in deficits I've already been figured in.
Oh, and this assumes that the revenue numbers hold up in the General Fund over the next 3 1/2 months, and that past cuts to the UW System and local governments remain. As I mentioned last week, don't expect those figures to stand, either on the revenue and spending sides.
So when you hear the Walker and WisGOP honks claim this one report means they have a "balanced budget and future surplus" (and they will...at least until the revenue numbers implode in the next 2 months), realize how much they have to stretch to get to those numbers and destroy public services in the process. Which underscores why it will never happen- because Walker is at 43% approval and plummeting since this budget and related "Walker 2016" agenda was announced 6 weeks ago. SO while the Fiscal Bureau and the Journal-Sentinel may have said today the Walker budget adds up on paper, most Wisconsinites know that it doesn't work in the real world.
With some of other items going on at the Capitol and in the country, we haven't talked about the Bucks arena situation recently. And there have been a couple of items over the last week that are noteworthy developments, one involving the NBA's side of the equation, and one involving events at the Capitol.
"Smoothing would have avoided a substantial Salary Cap spike in 2016-17," NBA executive vice president of communications Mike Bass said. "Under the league's smoothing approach, the salary shortfall resulting from more gradual Cap increases would have been paid directly to the Players Association for distribution to all players, and thus the total compensation paid to players in any given season would not have been impacted."
However, the NBPA has rejected this proposal in favor of a major spike to the salary cap in 2016. Experts believe the salary cap could rise to $90 million or more that year; it's at just $63 million this year. As NBA cap expert Larry Coon points out, this is a decision that should negatively affect a lot of rank-and-file union members who would have received bonus compensation under the proposed "smoothing" plan:...
The big factor here is the league's maximum salary, which is determined by the salary cap and should rise substantially in the summer of 2016. That means top free agents will be able to command significantly more money than ever before, and the vast majority of the new salary cap space will go to those players. Any leftover money will go to players who are set to be free agents that year and not to players who are already under contract.
This likely means that the Bucks would have a larger amount of "jock tax" revenue to kick in towards an arena, especially since the NBA also has a salary floor that is linked to the amount of the salary cap. This could conceivably speed up the timetable for the jock tax to pay back its share toward a new arena, while also raising the amount of foregone revenue that could be used for other needs in the state budget, since the Walker plan for the Bucks arena is supposed to divert all money to the arena project past a certain amount.
At the Capitol, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos says that his house of the Legislature might not give Gov Walker all $220 million in borrowing that Scotty wants toward the arena, but he might give him more than half of that.
Vos said he views $120 million as a base figure for the arena bonds. That is because if a new arena is not built, the state would be on the hook for $100 million in needed maintenance and improvements at the BMO Harris Bradley Center, plus a $20 million bond balance at the facility.
The Bradley Center Sports and Entertainment Corp. is an instrumentality of the state and the governor appoints a majority of the nonprofit corporation's board.
"We're going to spend $120 million to keep (the Bucks) here or to see them leave," Vos said. "That is a bottom line number I think is reasonable.
"Is there a number beyond that? $120 (million) to $150 (million) — maybe a little bit north of that. But I think our caucus is comfortable in that range because that's what we'd spend anyways."
Lowering the amount of borrowing won't have a huge effect on the current-year budget, since there is only $2.8 million set aside for net debt service in the current budget, but it certainly would lower the amounts to be paid in future years to pay off the smaller debt.
We still don't know a site for the arena, so it becomes quite difficult to figure out what local government assistance would be toward it...or if a TIF of related local tax incentive could even be part of the equation. That's because the LFB's summary of the Bucks arena bill indicates that the facility and its related buildings wouldn't pay property taxes.
Property Tax Exemption. Current law [s. 70.11(36) of the statutes] provides a property tax exemption for property consisting of or contained in a sports and entertainment home stadium of a professional athletic team that is a member of a league that contains teams with home stadiums in other states. The exemption includes parking lots, garages, restaurants, parks, concession facilities, entertainment facilities, transportation facilities, and other functionally related or auxiliary facilities or structures.
So the City and County of Milwaukee would likely be losing out on tens of millions of dollars of tax base from this new Bucks arena, which seems like quite a contribution before we even start talking about any extra streets or related infrastructure that those levels of government could give toward the arena development.
Of course, if the budget numbers implode in the coming weeks, then all bets are off in terms of what's available for this and future years. But even though the Bucks have been struggling as they try to hold on to a playoff berth, it does seem that the arena is making slow but sure progress toward being fleshed out into reality.
