Killer Koi

I keep koi; the picture above is a few of my fish. Koi are a domesticated version of the common carp, Cyprinus carpio, which is a widespread invasive species. There are common carp in almost every lake and river in Wisconsin, and they cause significant problems in some areas due to their habit of stirring up the mud to look for food. Common carp are actually pretty good eating, although most people in the US consider them trash fish.

But there's a far more evil side to carp. They can be killers. A species called the silver carp has the bad habit of leaping out of the water when boats scare them. For most types of fish that wouldn't be a problem, but silver carp can grow to over forty pounds and jump ten feet high! Getting slammed by one when you're cruising at speed can be lethal. I don't know much about the first picture below, but the women in the second picture ended up with a broken jaw.

(Picture source)

(Picture from Troutunderground.com)

Silver carp are one of several large introduced species collectively referred to as Asian carp. Far more important than their attempts to assassinate fisherman is the damage they can do to our native aquatic ecosystems. Asian carp have spread throughout the Mississippi River basin and are now on the verge of getting onto the Great Lakes. The only thing keeping them out is an electric barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. If that barrier fails, and it inevitably will, Asian carp will get into almost every major lake and river in the Eastern US.

Map - 2008 Hate Crime Rate by State

The map below shows the reported number of hate crimes per million residents in 2008, color-coded by state. The data is from the FBI's latest hate-crime report, which came out earlier today. Wisconsin, with a rate of 16.3, is in the low-middle of the range, but comparable with neighboring states. This is a significant change from a few years ago when Wisconsin had a extremely low hate crime rate, although that was probably due to under-reporting. Click on the map for a larger version.



To be included as a hate crime in the FBI statistics, a crime must first be reported to a local law-enforcement agency, which then makes a determination if it is a hate crime. That agency must then report it to the FBI, either directly or through the state's Attorney General or Department of Justice. Not all law-enforcement agencies report data to the FBI, and many that do probably do not accurately characterize hate crimes. Hate crimes also tend not to be reported or investigated in jurisdictions that that are hostile to the victimized minority.

There are obvious discrepancies in the map. Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia appear to vastly under-report hate crimes. There are a number of possible explanations, but given the clear state-by-state differences, the most likely is that hate-crime investigation and reporting by local law-enforcement agencies is not supported, or perhaps even discouraged, by the Attorney General and/or the Department of Justice in those states. Other states, Delaware for example, appear to have anomalously high hate-crime rates. This could be real, but it could also be the result of particularly intensive hate crime reporting and investigation efforts.

UPDATE: Some links and additional info:

FBI 2008 hate crime statistics: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2008/index.html
Caution on conclusions: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2008/variables.html

Some of the reporting on the new hate crime statistics, like this story from Fox, have been somewhat irresponsible. Fox's headline is "Reported Hate Crimes Surge in 2008". Reported hate crime did rise by 11%, but as Fox actually points out in the story, this could be due simply to improved reporting, not an actual increase in crime. The discrepancies in the my map clearly show that hate crime reporting is, at best, extremely uneven across the country.

To make the map I used Index Mundi's map creator. Very highly recommended.

US Verses the World in Wind Power

I saw an article recently about the success of wind power in Spain. Made me wonder how we compare to other countries in terms of what percentage of our electricity comes from wind, but a quick Google search didn't turn up much of an answer. So, as usual, I collected the data and made myself a chart. Click on it for a larger version:


That's us in red, way down in fifteenth place, getting about 1.3% of our electric power from wind. Given all our big talk about investing in green energy, it's pretty darn disappointing.

The raw data is from the US Energy Information Administration. The EIA is a goldmine of information, and their online tools make it easy to pull the data you want into Excel. Well worth poking around their website a bit if you're into energy issues.

Don't Get Married in Texas...

...because it looks like Texas accidentally outlawed all marriages in its rush to keep those awful gays out. The anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment that Texas passed in 2005 says in part:

"This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage."

See the little itty-bitty problem with that? Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Democrat running for Texas AG, just pointed out that the current AG, Republican Greg Abbott, really screwed up when he approved the amendment wording.

Love it! Conservatives can't even try to legalize discrimination without shooting themselves in the foot. And even the freepers are debating this mess.

Democratic Party of Wisconsin History Project - DPW Membership Data 1998 to 2008

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin is a membership organization, and membership dues are its single largest source of income. Thus, membership levels are an important indication of the health and vitality of the party, both at the county and state levels. Unfortunately, membership data is one of those things that tends to get lost when physical records are moved or computer systems are updated, so I've created a spreadsheet containing DPW membership by county from 1998 to 2008 and uploaded it to Google Docs.

Historical membership data like this is invaluable for determining the factors that drive party membership, evaluating membership building efforts, and holding party leaders accountable for their success or failure in building the party. Yet many county parties do not have accurate historical records because standard DPW membership reports only cover the prior two years, and older records are often lost when county party leadership changes. It also appears that much of the DPW's membership info prior to 1998, which is when the current membership database was developed, is inaccessible or missing.

For these reasons I've created a permanent depository for this data. If anybody has DPW statewide or county membership info prior to 1998, even if it's incomplete or fragmentary, please contact me (russwallac@aol.com) and I'll add it to the database. It would be great to be able to look back over the years and see the broad trends and issues that have affected the Democratic party in Wisconsin.

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Here are some notes on the data. They're included at the bottom of the spreadsheet, but they're hard to read online:

1. I have conflicting data for Menominee County for 2006. One source gives a partial year count of 3, while other sources do not show Menominee County as an active party unit after 2005.

2. Although listed separately in 2005, Waupaca and Waushara Counties were combined that year with a joint membership of 150.

3. The DPW incorrectly lists the 2005 membership total as 9116. This is a result of counting Waupaca and Waushara counties twice: As separate county parties and as a combined party unit.

4. Prior to 2003 there are discrepancies between the county membership sums and the official DPW totals, particularly in 2002 and 2001, as shown below. I can't resolve these differences with the data available to me.

Year - County total - DPW total - Difference

2002 ----- 8352 ----- 8594 ----- 242
2001 ----- 8262 ----- 8389 ----- 127
2000 ----- 7489 ----- 7495 ----- 6
1999 ----- 7410 ----- 7414 ----- 4
1998 ----- 7356 ----- 7362 ----- 6
1997 ----- 6097

5. DPW membership for other years:

Year - Membership
1972 --- 18,410
1967 --- ~8000
1964 --- ~27,000

(According to The history of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, 1949-1999, the huge drop between 1964 and 1967 was due to President Johnson's support for the Vietnam War)

Federal Stimulus Dollars - Wisconsin Ranks Dead Last!

Wisconsin, which historically has received far less back from the US Government than we've paid in federal taxes, is getting screwed once again by the federal stimulus program. We rank dead last, by a large margin, in terms of how many stimulus dollars we've received per unemployed citizen. The national average is roughly $9200, but Wisconsin has received only about a third of that. The map below, from News With Numbers, tells the story.


This information deserves a lot of attention, both from the media and from our elected leaders. The only way to get our fair share is to make lots of noise, so please spread it around!

Map - Wisconsin Unemployment by County

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This is the first fruit of an experiment to fully automate ReformDem maps. It's based on the work of Nathan Yau, who uses Python scripts to do all the heavy lifting for the choropleth maps on his very impressive blog, FlowingData.

Previously I've used a spreadsheet to calculate RGB color values for each county, and a paint program to manually apply them to a blank map. The results are nice, but it takes about half a day to make one map. If I can get the rest of the bugs worked out I should be able to make maps in a matter of minutes.

One interesting thing to notice in the map above is that Menominee County has one of the highest unemployment rates in Wisconsin. Menominee County is basically the Menominee Indian Reservation, and, as you can see from Nathan's national unemployment map, counties with high Native American populations also tend to have very high unemployment, and are among the poorest areas in the US.

Fort Hood

I have a personal connection to Fort Hood that makes today's events even sadder for me. I lived there as a kid, and many of my earliest and happiest memories are of our house in Comanche Village (now called Comanche I), just north of Tank Destroyer Blvd., on the west side of the base. The shootings, at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center on Battalion Ave., occurred about a mile from where we used to live.

Everyone who joins the military knows the risks, but you never expect something like this. My heart goes out to the dead and injured, and to their families and loved ones.

For Democratic Candidates to Win, Democratic Voters Need to Vote

You might think that's pretty obvious, but apparently not given what just happened in the Governor's race in Virginia.

Unfortunately for us, the Deeds campaign freaked out and read these polls wrong over the summer. Instead of attempting to energize more young and minority voters to the polls to make the electorate more representative of Virginia–they began running a campaign targeted to the people already planning to vote. Creigh began bashing federal Democratic priorities like “Cap and Trade” and health care reform to appeal to the conservatives that were headed to the polls.

And every time he did it, polls indicated turnout shriveled even further among Democrats and progressive voters–making the electorate even older, whiter, and more conservative. To which Creigh responded to by bashing federal Democrats more–which resulted in even more progressives becoming disengaged. Over and over, the cycle continued. Over the last six weeks, PPP polls indicated the share of the electorate that identified as Democrats declined from 38% to 31%. In other words almost one out of every five self-identified Democrats planning to vote on Labor Day has since then looked at Creigh Deeds and his conservative message, and decided they weren’t voting. Ouch!

I doubt Deeds could have won even if he hadn't run away from the Democratic base, so in this case it may not have made much of a difference, but in many 2010 races it probably will. Be interesting to see what lessons Democratic political "professionals" draw from this, and how they apply them next year.

Nope, No Racism Here...

Comment posted earlier today on the Wisconsin page at freerepublic.com regarding Obama's visit to Wright Middle School:

>> Obama ... promotes the Race-to-the-Top initiative

Yeah? Which race does he intend to push to the top? Probably not mine, I’m guessing.

You gotta love freepers, the intellectual godparents of the teabaggers. Click on the link above and read the whole thing. These are the folks who claim to be the true voice of American conservatism.

Can the Policy Positions of Elected Dems Damage the Democratic Party?

The relationship between Democratic elected officials and the Democratic Party is complex. Usually the Party, local, state, or national, is controlled by the most powerful elected official at that level, although that isn't always the case. The Democratic Party of Dane County, for instance, is essentially controlled, quietly and behind the scenes, by a union, AFSCME Council 40.

But I digress. The question is if unpopular policy positions taken by Democratic elected officials can significantly damage the Democratic Party. The answer is clearly yes. Back in the mid 1960's the Democratic Party of Wisconsin lost more than two-thirds of its members because of Lyndon Johnson's support for the Vietnam War, dropping from 27,000 in 1964 to 8,000 in 1967. Even today, after more than forty years, the DPW has never come close to its former size, with current membership hovering a little under 10,000. There are many reasons for that, but one is a divisive war fought a generation ago.

Democratic Party of Wisconsin History Project

Have you ever been curious about the history of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin? To the best of my knowledge the only relatively recent info published on this subject is The history of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, 1949-1999, by Dr. Richard Carlton Haney, Professor (now emeritus) of History at UW Whitewater, Erica Feldkamp, past DPW Intern, and Paul Tewes, past DPW Executive Director.

Unfortunately, this pamphlet is out of print and very difficult to obtain, although a few libraries have copies. Several years ago Dr. Haney and the DPW granted permission to put the newer edition online, and after a long delay here it is:

The history of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, 1949-1999

You can read it online, print a copy, or download it as a (rather large) PDF file. It's short, only about twenty-five pages of text and ten pages of pictures, and reads like a magazine article (which it originally was), although the additional material added in the second edition makes it somewhat disjointed at times.

One thing I find particularly interesting is the ideological struggles within the party over the years. Ideology and primary fights are two things that can tear a political party apart faster than just about anything else. There are important lessons here for today's DPW, although they're not always quite as obvious as one might think.

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The Democratic Party of Wisconsin History Project is my effort to preserve documents and other materials from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, and whenever possible to make them available on the web. I have two reasons for doing so. First, as I've learned from trying to trace my own family history, unless there is an active effort to preserve historical information it will inevitably be lost. Second, I hope that making such information more easily accessible will help current party leaders make wise decisions and lead to a bigger and more vibrant Democratic Party.

Please help me with this project. If you have material from past party conventions, DPW reports, newsletters, pictures, or personal stories about the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, contact me (russwallac@aol.com), and I will digitize them and put copies online to protect and preserve them for posterity.