ANY WONDER WHY CALIFORNIA IS GOING BROKE? A staggering list of California state agencies. “He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”
Archive for 2010
November 8, 2010
WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Don’t Let Old Bulls Run House Appropriations Committee. “House Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner of Ohio is making critically important decisions this week that will go far toward determining whether his tenure as Nancy Pelosi’s successor is marked by reform and progress or rebellion and lost opportunities. None of those decisions is more critical than who he backs as the new Republican committee chairmen in the House of Representatives. If he opts for a conventional approach that allows seniority to determine chairmanships, Boehner will seriously damage his credibility with voters who made crystal clear their demand for a new approach in Congress. . . . The best choice for Appropriations would be Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia, who has pushed House Republicans to reform earmarks for years and was the principal backer of the GOP caucus’ current moratorium on them.”
FRANK LUNTZ: WHAT AMERICANS WANT:
Over the past two years, I’ve polled tens of thousands of Americans. Their top complaint about politicians is that they fail to “say what they mean and mean what they say.” Their top complaint about government is that it lacks “accountability.” Their top complaint about Washington is that “government has grown too big, too inefficient, and too out of control to do even the bare minimum things it is supposed to do.”
These concerns explain why Hurricane Katrina ended President George W. Bush’s presidency three years before his term expired. They explain why the gulf oil spill disaster crystallized voters’ concerns that Obama is in over his head. And they explain why the stimulus – after all those billions in debt, unemployment is still near 10 percent – has been deemed a failure.
Americans’ agenda is simple. In broad terms, they want the government to spur job growth, but not by subsidizing more government jobs with taxpayer dollars. They want Washington to balance the budget and reverse the growing influence of government on daily life. They want the government to encourage success, allow failure, punish those who break the law – and then get out of the way. And above all, they want politicians to follow through on their promises, even if that means tempering those promises in the first place.
And huge majorities, Luntz reports, agree with the Contract From America. No surprise. It was crowdsourced.
JAKE TAPPER: Odd Little Moment at the CEO Meeting. It’s not the Kenyan part that’s interesting. It’s the sentence-completion. It’s all about me, me, me.
ANDREW FERGUSON: What’s So Great About America. “First, the idea of American exceptionalism has the benefit of being true. The United States is fundamentally and demonstrably different from other countries. It is bound together by a founding proposition, and properly applied the proposition has brought freedom and prosperity to more people, and more kinds of people, than any other. Second, a large majority of Americans believe American exceptionalism to be true.” Read the whole thing to find out #3.
FROM SUPER-SOAKER TO SOLAR REVOLUTION? A profile of inventor Lonnie Johnson.
AT THE SPECULIST, A SURVEY: What Does Technology Want?
CALIFORNIA: The Lindsay Lohan of States. “Sacramento is headed for trouble again, and it shouldn’t expect a bailout.”
THE CONVERGENCE CONTINUES: A portable GPS, with built-in digital camera, for $84.99. Cameras with GPS, cellphones with cameras and GPS, GPS with cameras — where will it stop? WIth implantable communications/GPS/camera chips?
UPDATE: Reader John McKay writes:
I already have the portable GPS with cameras, cell phone and much more, in the form of my iPhone, but for normal driving duty the screen is just too small to be really useful. what I’d really like to have is a dedicated car-based GPS with real-time traffic and weather overlays. The ultimate would be one that uses HUD (Heads Up Display) technology as well, allowing the driver to navigate and keep their eyes on the road at the same time.
This sort of super-GPS would have been most useful back in September 2009, when we had the “500 year floods” in Atlanta. My 45 minute commute turned into a 3.5 hour ordeal, and was that short only because I remembered a (apparently) little-known side road that did not have creek crossings, and therefore was not cut off.
Indeed.
ILYA SOMIN ON Challenges to ObamaCare’s individual mandate. “When 21 states and several private groups initiated lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the Obama health care law earlier this year, critics denounced the suits as frivolous political grandstanding. But it is increasingly clear that the plaintiffs have a serious case with a real chance of victory.”
TRACY QUAN TO ELIOT SPITZER: Stop hiding from your call-girl past. “What does it say about the stunted liberal imagination when Republican trickster Roger Stone is the only person in an Alex Gibney film who can articulate the political concerns of sex workers? He pounces on Spitzer for busting escort agencies, something Spitzer’s water carriers are happy to overlook. The liberals come across as naive or, in Wayne Barrett’s case, cynical partisans who regard people in the sex industry as collateral damage.”
THINGS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED THIS WEEKEND, if you were out, you know, having a life:
My Sunday Washington Examiner column: It’s not about compromise or confrontation — it’s about clarity.
I talk with Scott Rasmussen about what the Tea Party movement should do next.
Barney Frank: The Mockery Has Only Just Begun. Plus, The Madness of King Barney.
ThinkProgress festoons itself with updates of shame.
Geographically-challenged Gentry: New York, Arkansas…You Know, the Midwest.
Fatty Fish Protects Against Prostate Cancer.
Beware the radioactive rabbits. “That’s no ordinary rabbit, man — it’s a killer!”
Is the Kindle killing independent bookstores?
Your tax dollars at work: While warning about fat, U.S. Government pushes sales of cheese.
BOSTON HERALD: Go for it, Scott Brown! Don’t be silly. There’s no way this country would elect a Senator with a mere two years of experience to the highest office in the land.
GAY MOM DEBORAH GOLDSTEIN: Why do New Yorkers bring out the evangelical suburbanite in me? Maybe because they say things like “I don’t actually care where you live. If I can’t get to you by subway, you might as well be in Kansas.”
SCRAP THE DEBT CEILING? One Man’s Debt Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor. “With so much at stake, debt limit legislation is ‘must-pass’ legislation, so lawmakers usually try to attach all sorts of mischievous things to it, typically things related to the budget. Lawmakers who vote to raise the debt limit can then tell their constituents that, while they did so, they also voted to rein in spending or reduce future deficits.”
MARK MCKINNON: To Hell With The Press. “Rick Perry won an unprecedented third term as Texas governor while actively shunning the press corps. . . . Talk about a paradigm shift. This is a sea change in the way candidates have historically campaigned. Good news for candidates who never much liked kissing the rings of the media elites. But more bad news for the increasing irrelevance of newspapers and the mainstream media.”
WASHINGTON EXAMINER: HARRY REID SHOULD NOT BE ABOVE THE LAW. “As former Federal Election Commissioner Hans A. von Spakovsky explained Friday in The Examiner, federal law makes it illegal for officials with a Senate campaign to coordinate with corporate or union officials.”
CHANGE: Washington State Voters Reject Income Tax on ‘Wealthy’. “Washington State voters on Tuesday defeated, 65% to 35%, an initiative that would have imposed a state income tax on the ‘wealthy’ — >$200,000 (single), >$400,000 (married filing jointly).”
ED DRISCOLL: Hide The Decline. “Has anyone heard from Zell Miller recently? He could very easily be doing a ‘See, I Told You So’ victory tour right now.”
JIM TREACHER: Keith Olbermann is an impartial journalist. Just ask him! “In other Yes, Keith Actually Said That news, here are some selections from his Twitter feed a couple of weeks ago, giving a full-throated defense of NPR’s decision to fire Juan Williams for violating his contract.”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Stay Worried.
What worries me about President Obama is really one general issue: his very concrete enjoyment of the good life as evidenced by his golf outings, Martha Vineyard vacations, and imperial entourages that accompany him abroad, and yet his obvious distrust of the private sector and the success of the wealthy. Yet my discomfort here is not even one that arises from an obvious hypocrisy of, say, a Michelle on the 2008 campaign trail lecturing the nation about its meanness or her own previous lack of pride in her country, juxtaposed with her taste for the publicly provided rareified enjoyments of a Costa del Sol hideaway at a time of recession.
No, my worries run deeper. Apparently, the president is unaware that after some 2,500 years of both experience with and abstract thought about Western national economies, we know that a free, private sector increases the general wealth of a nation, while a statist redistributive state results in a general impoverishment of the population. At the root of that truth is simple human nature—that people wish to further their own interest more fervently than the more abstract public good (e.g., why the renter does not wash the rental car, or why the public restroom is treated differently from its counterpart at home), and can be encouraged to invent, create, and discover which helps the less fortunate, lucky, healthy, or talented.
As always, read the whole thing.