Some House members don't spend all of their staffing allowance. A few of them return the unneeded allowance to the Treasury. Most don't, spending as much as possible (go figure).

In this case some of the defeated House members had a good deal of money to their credit and they paid it all out to their staffers as they left office.

Departing members of the House of Representatives awarded millions of dollars in extra pay to aides as they closed down their offices, according to lawmakers' spending records.

The 96 lawmakers paid their employees $6.7 million, or 31%, more in the fourth quarter of 2010 than they did, on average, in the first three quarters of the year.

That's about twice as much as the 16% increase awarded by lawmakers who returned to the 112th Congress, according to LegiStorm, an organization that tracks congressional salaries.

The disparity suggests retiring or defeated members used remaining funds in their official expenses budgets to boost salaries for staffers before they left Washington, cash that might otherwise have been returned to the U.S. Treasury.

...

Because most of the departing members were Democrats, fourth-quarter salary increases in 2010 for Democratic staffers were the largest in the decade LegiStorm has been gathering such data.

The article says that "similar" -- but not equal -- payouts were seen after the 2006 elections put many Republicans out on the street.

A Congressional staffer wrote to me at one point making the case that Congressional budgets were not unreasonable. Some Congressmen have very large districts in terms of pure geographical size, and have to maintain several offices back home -- one office won't do the trick if the jurisdiction is large enough; no one's going to drive three hours to see their Congressman.

That may be true, but many Congressmen have compact districts; shouldn't the fix here be to offer additional money only to those Congressmen representing jurisdictions needing more than one office? There's little chance of mischief as you can create a simple formula for it, based on the square mileage of a district and maximum distance end to end. And specify that this additional allowance can only be used for the purpose of establishing additional offices (that is, you can't use to hire additional legislative aides in DC.)

And the rest of them can take a cut in their allowance.

It sure seems that we're granting too big an allowance to most Congressmen if so many of them are well under their spending limit and have to contrive ways to give it all away.

Posted by: Ace at 07:53 AM | Comments (110)
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Maybe.

Playing a game of political chicken, Democratic senators who fled Wisconsin to stymie restrictions on public-employee unions said Sunday they planned to come back from exile soon, betting that even though their return will allow the bill to pass, the curbs are so unpopular they'll taint the state's Republican governor and legislators.

...Sen. Mark Miller said he and his fellow Democrats intend to let the full Senate vote on Gov. Scott Walker's "budget-repair" bill, which includes the proposed limits on public unions' collective-bargaining rights. The bill, which had been blocked because the missing Democrats were needed for the Senate to have enough members present to vote on it, is expected to pass the Republican-controlled chamber.

He said he thinks recent polls showing voter discontent with Mr. Walker over limits on bargaining rights have been "disastrous" for the governor and Republicans and give Democrats more leverage to seek changes in a broader two-year budget bill Mr. Walker proposed Tuesday.

I know a lot of people are worried about the polls showing Walker's plan is unpopular in Wisconsin but I'm not one of them. Of course this is going to be unpopular. People like all sorts of things in theory ("Cut spending!") that they aren't thrilled with in reality ("What do you mean you're going to cut spending I like?"). Would it be nice if people instinctively got the connection between the corrupt nature of public sector unions and the destruction of the public fisc? Sure but they don't, at least in Wisconsin.

We need leaders like Governor Walker who are doing hard and unpopular things. Hopefully once the budget repair bill is passed and the people of Wisconsin see that they are saving money, still getting the services they want and that public sector workers haven't been sold into some 21st Century form of slavery they will come around. If they don't, well, it's a democracy. The people of Wisconsin have the right to be stupid and vote accordingly. They just better not come complaining to the rest of us when they need to be bailed out.

Update: Maybe not? According to TPM another Democratic State Senator says, nope.

Sen. Miller's comments are taken out of context in the Wall Street Journal article just released. Dems will return when collective bargaining is off the table. That could be soon based on the growing public opposition to the bill and the recall efforts against Republicans. Unfortunately, the WSJ fished for the quote they wanted, skipping this key step in logic: we won't come back until worker's rights are preserved.

Gee, sounds like dissension in the ranks. Remember last week all the stories about how some GOP Senators might break ranks and scuttle their party's efforts? Will we see the same sort of stories about the Democrats who can't seem to keep their stories straight? I kind of doubt it.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:17 AM | Comments (154)
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Historic. The President's signature legislation is so wonderful and so necessary that over 1,000 waivers from its burdensome requirements have been granted.

HHS posted 126 new waivers on Friday, bringing the total to 1,040 organizations that have been granted a one-year exemption from a new coverage requirement included in the healthcare reform law enacted almost a year ago. Waivers have become a hot-button issue for Republicans, eager to expose any vulnerabilities in the reform law.

Democrats spent over a year claiming there was a moral imperative to do away with the mini-med plans that now routinely get a waiver from the Obama Administration. So, were they lying then or are they immoral now?

Could be both:

The department also said the number of waivers has been steadily decreasing. HHS approved more than 500 in December, which it attributed to most plan years starting Jan. 1. It then approved 200 waivers in January and 126 in February.

It's hard to tell if that's just bad reporting (remember, reporters are generally stupid creatures) or if HHS really did tell him that the number of waivers has been decreasing. I'm going to go with the former, though, because that paragraph looks like it was plucked and poorly paraphrased from the official talking points on the ObamaCare website. The number of waivers has not been decreasing. In fact, the number of waivers just increased to a record 1,040. What the reporter meant, and failed to convey, was that the rate of the increase in healthcare waivers has been decreasing. English iz hard.

So who got waivers in this bunch? Several unions, including an SEIU local, some school districts and county governments, and several private companies, including the parent company of Pizza Hut and KFC, got a reprieve from ObamaCare.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:21 AM | Comments (95)
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ItÂ’s not the V_f = V_i + a·t that kills you, itÂ’s the F = m·ΔV/ΔT.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:51 AM | Comments (92)
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Last call for the weekend.

So What Were a US SoldierÂ’s Odds of Dying in Each War?

From Nicholas Hobbes' Essential Militaria comes this table of the odds of a US soldier being killed in various wars:

• War of Independence: 2 percent (1 in 50)
• War of 1812: 0.8 percent (1 in 127)
• Indian Wars: 0.9 percent (1 in 106)
• Mexican War: 2.2 percent (1 in 45)
• Civil War: 6.7 percent (1 in 15)
• Spanish-American War: 0.1 percent (1 in 798 )
• World War I: 1.1 percent (1 in 89)
• World War II: 1.8 percent (1 in 56)
• Korean War: 0.6 percent (1 in 171)
• Vietnam War: 0.5 percent (1 in 185)
• Persian Gulf War: 0.03 percent (1 in 3,162)

Clearly the Civil War was statistically the deadliest war but the Mexican and Revolutionary Wars also deadlier than they're usually described.

Another surprising fact is that the Vietnam War was actually less dangerous than the Korean War. But of course in movies and TV going to Vietnam was portrayed as practically a death sentence.

More here. more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:00 PM | Comments (611)
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Drudge fires off a series of headlines:

Libya lurches close to full-blown civil war...
UK 'to send team of spies' to help oust Gadhafi...
British Army readies for mission at 24 hours' notice...
Obama goes golfing...

It's his 60th gold outing. Pretty lucky of him to be elected president when everything was going swimmingly and he could just coast in caretaker mode.

Well, the mercury has crept back up above 60 degrees here in Washington, and so itÂ’s time once again for President Obama to head out to the golf course.

This is the presidentÂ’s 60th time golfing as president, meaning Obama has spent two months of his presidency on the golf course.

The rounds usually take about five hours, including motorcading back an forth to the course.

According to statistics compiled by CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller, who keeps close tabs on the presidentÂ’s activities, Obama played 30 rounds in 2010, 28 rounds in 2009, and two this year, including today.

Bush, of course, gave up the game in 2003, deciding he could not explain to a dead soldier's parents why he was golfing during a period of war.

We're very lucky to have gotten such a cool dude for president.

One of the president's implicit powers is to decide when there is and isn't a crisis. If the president doesn't want to deal with genocide in Darfur, he just never talks about it. He behaves like it's not a crisis, and the weak-minded media goes along with that.

That's what Obama's doing here.

Wait, no it's not. Obama's just playing golf because he's never had a real job in his life and the presidency is no reason to give up his precious me-time.

Posted by: Ace at 01:22 PM | Comments (463)
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I.e., mostly filler. I don't know where Ace or the other cob-loggers are. So yammer away here until someone else regains consciousness. For me: I got nothin'.
more...

Posted by: Monty at 10:08 AM | Comments (249)
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One book I read this past week was Kay Hymowitz's book Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys. My verdict? You can read it here. (Hint: I'm not a fan.)

Every so often, I'll get tired of reading inside my usual "comfort zone", and strike out into areas that don't generally interest me. I find that when this urge takes me, John McPhee is the guide I turn to in order to make uninteresting subjects (to me) interesting. His book Annals of the Former World is a great place to start. To say that it's a book about geology is like saying that Moby Dick is about a sea-captain with personal issues. It's actually a compendium of four books he's written over the years (plus a new piece written specifically for this book) on the geological history of North America. What makes this book so wonderful is McPhee's skill as an explainer and raconteur: he not only simplifies the complex, but places his explanations in a human context. He shares his slightly-geeky happiness at discovery with you. Highly recommended, even if you don't like science or nature writing as a rule.

And finally, a book I picked up but haven't read yet: The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World by Edward Dolnick. This struck me as being the real-world equivalent of Neal Stephenson's book Quicksilver, a book I enjoyed a great deal, so I thought I'd give it a try. (NB: If you buy this book, just get the hardcover. It's only a dollar more than the Kindle edition. The publishers are really started to screw people on the e-book versions of new releases, and Amazon can often discount the paper book to almost the same price.)

What's everyone else reading?

Posted by: Monty at 05:12 AM | Comments (199)
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Happy Caturday (blah blah blah):

You guys want cats? I got yer cats right hereÂ…

ONT Quote of the Night:

Wise words indeed... more...

Posted by: Genghis at 06:25 PM | Comments (679)
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Charlie Sheen is doing a live broadcast on Ustream tonight at 7:00 Pacific. (Below the fold.) I'd like to think I'm too civilized for popular twaddle like that, but... get me some popcorn, baby!

Gotta give him props for the name, "Sheen's Korner." I love that. The "k" helps encapsulate the kitschy nature of the whole thing.

You're either in Sheen's Korner or with the trolls! more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 05:32 PM | Comments (209)
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