February 11, 2012

"More than a million petitions were submitted this month to force a recall election for Gov. Scott Walker."

So says the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in a sidebar to its article, published yesterday, about Scott Walker's "hero's reception" at the Conservative Political Action Conference last night.

First of all, the petitions were submitted last month, but more importantly, there's no way "more than a million petitions were submitted." There's a claim that the petitions contain more than a million signatures, but there are multiple signatures per petition, and the calculation that there are more than a million signatures is based on the assumption that there are an average of 6+ signatures per petition.
[A]ccording to the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board we do know 152,336 Scott Walker recall petition pages were turned in two weeks ago.
152,336 is a lot less than "more than a million." But even if the Journal Sentinel had said "signatures" instead of "petitions," it should not have flatly stated "more than a million petitions were submitted." We have yet to see an accurate count of the number of signatures. And that's quite apart from the question of duplicate/fake/ineligible signatures.

The number of claimed signatures is high presumably to make Walker supporters give up on trying to prove that there aren't enough signatures. Now, perhaps they should give up — not because it's hopeless, but because the Walker opponents don't have a good candidate to field. It's quite bizarre, all the work they've done campaigning for blank-to-be-filled-in-later. And if the candidate is Kathleen Falk, Walker's already showing us how effective he will be against her:
"She's basically saying she's bought and paid for by the unions. I mean even the other Democrats are hesitant to say that they're going to veto something," Walker said....
Read the article at that last link for background on the veto demand, the pledge, and the endorsement. But back to the first link, the "hero's welcome" article about Walker's CPAC speech:
"When we prevail [in the recall election], it will send a powerful message to every politician in America, that if you stand up and do the right thing, if you tackle the tough challenges, if you make the tough choices, there will be men and women in every state and every part of this country who will stand up shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm with you," he said....

"Collective bargaining is not a right. In the public sector, collective bargaining is an expensive entitlement."...

Introducing the governor, [National GOP chairman Reince Priebus] said of the Wisconsin fight: "The public union bosses are angry and refuse to go down without a fight. They're pulling out every trick in the book, because after all, hornets are always angriest when you try to destroy their nests."
(Mixed metaphor: Hornets don't have books.)

ADDED: Here's video of 2 and a half minutes of the speech.

17 comments:

bagoh20 said...

""When we prevail [in the recall election], it will send a powerful message to every politician in America, that if you stand up and do the right thing, if you tackle the tough challenges, if you make the tough choices, there will be men and women in every state and every part of this country who will stand up shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm with you," "

So then when you lose the message must be that you where standing up for the WRONG thing. I agree with that. Now lets see which it is.

Damon said...

Why don't you have a mixed metaphor tag? I hardly ever use tags but was shocked when I looked for it. One of your hobby horses needs a tag. :)

Alex said...

I like the analogy of Walker smashing the hornet's nest of unions! Smash away Scottie.

John from Pomeroy on the Palouse said...

Hornets don't have books? What do they use? Kindles or Nooks?

WV was pinger. must be a hornet who's got ADHD

edutcher said...

Hey, they're trying to make everybody think there are a million petitions with a million signatures each.

A trillion people against Walker. Yeah, that'll scare 'em.

Unknown said...

Good strategery! Draw them out, drain them of their money, then finish them off in the election.

Unknown said...

Do hornets have nests or hives?

Rusty said...

So the cow has been full of shit?
Oh. my.
mistakes were made.

people will be blamed.

Indigo Red said...

Hornets don't have books.

My college alma mater are Hornets and when I was there we had books, lots of books.

eelpout said...

So the cow has been full of shit?
Oh. my.
mistakes were made.


No, as usual, I was right. 4 senate recalls, 86,000+ signatures, guess how many fake names were challenged? Take a guess.

wildswan said...

There were 152350 recall petition sheets. They are numbered and certified. Some sheets had room for 5 names, some had room for 10. Some sheets were completely filled; most were not. If 152350 sheets had been completely filled and had ten names then there would have been 1.5 million signatures. This definitely did not happen. Many, many sheets have only one name. You would have to count 152350 sheets to know how many names are there. I would do it as part of a large group - anyone interested?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

"Collective bargaining is not a right. In the public sector, collective bargaining is an expensive entitlement."...

Wow.. is that even true?

I've never heard that before.. I mean the way these protesters were carrying on.. they made it sound like their rights were being trampled.

Wince said...

"The public union bosses are angry and refuse to go down without a fight. They're pulling out every trick in the book, because after all, hornets are always angriest when you try to destroy their nests."(Mixed metaphor: Hornets don't have books.)

Isn't that one complete metaphor and one idiom?

Metaphor - Public unionists: collective bargaining :: hornets: nests.

Idiom - "pulling every trick in the book".

Moreover, "Social Wasps", including hornets, use paper (wood pulp) to construct their nests. The process is simple... a wasp collects wood fiber by using its mandibles... Sometimes it collects fiber from man-made paper products.

We ought to be Locked Away

We can't do anything
Any trick in the book
We can't go anywhere
Just as long, just as long as...

We ought to be locked away
We ought to be locked away
Locked away...

JAL said...

That's what editors were for.

Now reporters are too good to be critiqued.

Joanna said...

I'm entering data for Verify the Recall, and from what I've seen, roughly 1 out of 10 are full. (Both for 5 signature and 10 signature formats.) FWIW.

T J Sawyer said...

If I recall correctly, freshman Engineering majors who flunked Calculus moved to the Business school. If they then flunked Economics, they moved to the Journalism school where they were told, "there will be no math."

Of course, the engineers now work for the business majors and the journalism majors couldn't find gainful employment and went into politics.

They now make the rules for everyone else.

Rusty said...

Tim I said fraudulent signatures which would include fake names. The majority seem to be the names of real people who were fraudulently entered. IE; people whos names were used without their knowledge. A typical democrat tactic. I'd be willing to bet, since you're a progressive in a college town, that in your circle of friends there are people that have done this.
I stand by my 20% estimate.