IT’S J.G. BALLARD’S WORLD, we just live in it.

JERRY POURNELLE: A PROGRAM FOR REPUBLICANS:

Getting the economy going again is important; the Democrats aren’t going to do it. The “stimulus” with its “shovel ready” jobs didn’t do it – indeed, the President was amused to tell us that the shovels weren’t as ready as he had thought. A near trillion dollar oops. The problem was that funneling the money to cronies didn’t do anything to rebuild the national infrastructure, which continues to deteriorate. A new stimulus won’t help that. The infrastructure can be rebuilt by state and local governments, and will have to, but to do that will require state and local government reforms: all levels of government are broke, and will stay that way until the economy improves. Getting the feds out of that act will stimulate the states to compete for jobs and capital – as Texas is already doing, extracting a lot of jobs and capital from Silicon Valley to Austin and other high tech regions in Texas. Competition among the states will reduce regulatory strangulation, but only if the feds stop throttling the economy.

There is a way to get started on this. Now.

I like this bit: “Double the exemption numbers for small businesses: that is, whatever regulations you are exempt from by dint of having 10 or fewer employees, you will now be exempt if you have 20 or fewer; similarly for larger numbers. The regulations will still apply, but the exemption numbers are doubled.”

Repealing Sarbanes-Oxley is good, too. And so’s — well, hell, just read the whole thing. The GOP candidate who adopts it will get some traction.

UPDATE: Reader K.J. Tullis writes:

Saw your link to the Pournelle article this morning, in which he discusses the outflow of companies and jobs from California to Texas. As someone who lives next door to Texas, might I suggest that the its good citizens will come to regret this strategy. The mess in California just didn’t happen, nor was it passively allowed to happen. It is the end result of a path actively endorsed by the majority of its inhabitants, many of whom are whining the loudest about the inevitable results, and in fact, are leaving for better climes.

When I was a kid, growing up in Southern California in the early 60’s, it was a very forward looking place. In school we learned about Fr. Serra and his fellow Franciscans showing up, building the missions, and bringing both Christianity and agriculture to the local peoples. This was viewed as a good thing. We were taken on field trips to the LA harbor and marveled at the manmade breakwater and the huge ships moving about. We learned about other great feats of engineering – the Colorado River Aqueduct, the freeways, and the airports. We learned about Signal Hill and how important oil production was to the state. It was a rich, prosperous, and ambitious place. Unfortunately, its wealth provided the slack resources sufficient to allow the citizens to embrace ideas that undermined this very wealth and its ultimate sources. Nowadays, Serra promoted genocide, the engineering feats have destroyed the environment, and the oil resources are a blight. The ideas and beliefs that have decimated California, are in fact, shared by huge swathes of the populace. In spite of their suffering in the world they helped create, when many of these business owners and workers move to other places they bring their dumb ideas with them. Trust me, they may be economic refugees, but they will be the first to start kvetching about the refineries down the road.

Perhaps they’ll learn.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Michael Chamberlain writes:

Experience shows us they won’t.

I moved to Nevada 23 years ago, not from California, and we’ve seen a massive influx of former Golden State residents during that time. Californians are infamous for exporting their problems with them.

Far too many California refugees make no connection between the conditions that caused them to leave and the policies that created those conditions. They complain about the high cost of living in their former state then demand the same level of regulatory controls, government “services” and tax burden in their new home.

Nevada has gone from a relative bastion of libertarianism to a state with an increasingly stifling regulatory morass, a glacial bureaucracy and an ever-intrusive nanny state.

I’m sure you can find similar sentiments expressed by other residents in Nevada as well as Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Colorado and other states the millions of Californians ex-pats have chosen to take up residence during the last couple decades.

Obviously, then, one must adopt cultural traits that they find irritating enough that they’ll move on.

PHILIP KLEIN: Lawyer Who Challenged ObamaCare Speaks. “Michael Carvin, one of the lawyers who argued against President Obama’s national health care law before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, said the court’s decision to strike down the law’s individual mandate shows that the constitutional questions being raised transcend politics. . . . President Clinton appointed one of the judges who co-authored the majority opinion in today’s two to one court decision. The suit was brought by 26 states led by Florida, as well as the National Federation of Independent Business. Carvin represented the NFIB.”

THE HILL: Palin Steals Show At Iowa State Fair.

CHILD ABUSE: Van Jones Forces Innocent Children to Advocate Infrastructure Spending, Oppose Corporate Personhood on YouTube.

JAMES TARANTO: The Great Deflation: Barack Obama Keeps Getting Smaller And Smaller:

Like a leaky balloon, Barack Obama keeps getting smaller. “The president is declaring to the world that he is simply too weak to govern,” Peter Wehner observes. “Not only that, he wants all of America to know that he’s darn frustrated about it. You can even hear it in his voice.” That last comment isn’t Wehner’s evaluation but a paraphrase of the president’s own words: “Maybe you hear it in my voice–that’s why I’m frustrated. Because you deserve better.”

Wait, it gets worse. Last night Obama was in New York for a fund-raiser. At that event he elaborated on the “you deserve better” theme: “What was remarkable was to see outside of Washington the enthusiasm, the energy, the hopefulness, the decency of the American people. And what I said to them is you deserve better. You deserve better than you’ve been getting out of Washington over the last 2½ months–for that matter, for the last 2½ years.”

For the last 2½ years. Is that not as explicit an acknowledgment of failure as has ever been heard from a sitting president?

Indeed.

WHAT TERRY MCAULIFFE IS UP TO: Clinton’s Sleepover Fundraising Maven Breaks Ground For 300,000 Car Factory In Inner Mongolia While Chinese Head To The U.S. On $500,000 Green Cards.

VIDEO: Ann Althouse Attacked By Protesters At Wisconsin Capitol. “As discussed in an earlier post, a man attacked me today at the Capitol. We captured the assault on 2 different cameras.”

Boy, the lefties in Wisconsin have really gone crazy. Alas, I fear we’ll see similar crackups elsewhere. It’s not just the loss of power, it’s the squashing of a worldview.

UPDATE: From the comments: “Fact is, it’s what I expect. The left loves political violence when they’re the ones committing it.”

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: THE SYSTEM WORKS:

Of all the endlessly repeated conventional wisdom in today’s Washington, the most lazy, stupid, and ubiquitous is that our politics is broken. On the contrary. Our political system is working well (I make no such claims for our economy), indeed, precisely as designed — profound changes in popular will translated into law that alters the nation’s political direction.

The process has been messy, loud, disputatious, and often rancorous. So what? In the end, the system works. Exhibit A is Wisconsin. Exhibit B is Washington itself.

I think that “our politics is broken” is shorthand for “Obama isn’t doing so well.”

PJTV: Tony Katz talks to Bret Baier.

JUST A THANK-YOU to everyone who’s shopped through the Amazon links on this site and the searchbox in the right sidebar. You’ve put a little money in my family’s pocket at no cost to yourself, and it’s much appreciated. Thanks again!

THAT 11TH CIRCUIT OBAMACARE DECISION: From judicial abdication to “judicial engagement.”

DEAR CALIFORNIA: I’m leaving you. Here’s why. It’s not me, it’s you.

Okay, you want examples. Here are a few things I’ve had to deal with:

The State of California arbitrarily decided that all businesses that gross over $100,000/year should have an account where you have to report quarterly on the sales tax your customers pay you for goods sold. The only problem? My company only sold services–not products–which aren’t taxed in California. When I closed the account (by going into a local office and spending nearly an hour explaining my situation), they forced it open again and sent me a nastygram explaining that I would owe fines for not filing the quarterly report. You have to file it 4 times a year, and it takes time to fill out, even if you haven’t sold any products and owe the state nothing.

The state charges an income tax of 10% on all income over $47,055. This is in addition to the Federal income tax of 25% on income over $34,001. This is also in addition to an 8.25-9.25% sales tax (depending on where you buy products.) I paid enough in income tax for 2010 to the state of California alone to hire another new worker for my business. I’d bet a lot of money that I’m far more efficient at creating jobs as a small business owner than the state is given the same amount of money. I’d rather have that money to hire someone.

And a really dumb law for small business owners, which Meg Whitman promised to repeal: An annual fee of $800 just to have a corporation in the state of California. (Most states don’t charge you, or only charge you a few dollars, as an annual fee to set up a business. California’s is exorbitant, and it applies as long as you, the primary officer of the corporation, live in California…no matter where you incorporate.)

And that’s just the beginning. . . .

CHANGE: Teen Unemployment In Washington, D.C. Tops 50%.

SOMEHOW, I THINK THIS ROBERT HEINLEIN QUOTE IS WORTH REPEATING ONE MORE TIME:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

You know?

MARKETS: Venture Capitalists Back Away From Clean Energy. The real problem seems to be that without government subsidies it can’t make money, and governments are now too broke to offer enough subsidies.

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Military History.

WILL C.A.F.E. STANDARDS FOR BIG RIGS MAKE A DIFFERENCE? “Trucking companies obsess about fuel costs. Talk to a trucker right now: you’ll get an earful. Better yet, talk to his manager. It’s like finding some sort of Rain Man savant whose hobby is tracking the price of diesel. And there is capital out there to help them make the transition to a more efficient fleet, if the trucks are available. So I have a hard time believing that if there were some even nominally cost-effective way to make trucks 25% more efficient, truck owners and haulers would be passing it up in favor of upgrading the leather on the heated seats. . . . Either something is missing in this story, or American manufacturing is in even worse shape than I suspected.”

11TH CIRCUIT rules ObamaCare mandate unconstitutional. This is the multi-state lawsuit filed by the 26 state attorneys general.

WHAT A CUTE, FLUFFY GALAXY!

GALLERY: Past Meets Present.

FROM TONY KATZ, The Cigar Of The Day.

WANT A TOYOTA RAV4 EV? You should probably live in California.

A ROCK FESTIVAL as seen through its trash. And porta-potties. “Most of the trash tossed at the festival, though, wasn’t so dangerous. It was just plain old plastic, aluminum, or paper. But in an age when environmentalism is practically a religion, the way people behave with any garbage is a serious matter, fraught with social, political, even spiritual implications.”

IN THE MAIL: From Rob Merges, Justifying Intellectual Property.