Governor Daniels is facing the Gordian Knot in his home state of Indiana and I’m guessing that by this time next week his political future will be cast.

The Indiana House and Senate have both passed, by what appears to be veto proof margins, a bill that bans abortions after 20 weeks AND cuts Planned Parenthood off from all state and Medicaid funds. The bill is headed for Governor Daniels desk.

Let me note here that I don’t know a whole lot of specifics about Mitch Daniels. My perception is that he’s been an excellent governor for his state, he’s taken on the public employee unions and consistently won and he’s reduced the scope of government in his state, not a line most politicians can put on their resume. He also seems to have demonstrated a remarkable ability to stuff a bunch of feet in his mouth simultaneously.

OK, now to his conundrum. Daniels is solidly pro-life and apparently has an excellent record in Indiana on life issues. He’s also done an excellent job of dealing with state spending. Rubber meet road…

family planning in Indiana is a fiscal as well as a social issue. Half of all births in the state are covered by Medicaid. If Daniels signs the Senate version of the bill, he would likely be giving up $4 million in federal dollars and bringing the state into a costly legal battle.

Because federal law blocks states from choosing which organizations can provide family planning services to Medicaid patients, the measure could cost the state all federal funding for family planning. Planned Parenthood is prepared to sue if the proposal is signed into law. They also estimate that the move would cost the state $68 million in Medicaid expenses for unintended pregnancies by reducing birth control access.

You can bet your last farthing that both PP and the Obama Administration will take the state to court. They will likely win in the opening rounds and the case(s) will be decided at the appellate level at a minimum.

You can also bet that same farthing that if Daniels vetos this bill he’s done as a potential Presidential candidate.

Personally I think he could veto the bill and make a decent case for doing so. I also know that a large segment of Republican primary voters could not care less about his reasoning, frankly me included.

It’s gonna be an interesting next few days…

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Some interesting snippets on matters of the economy at the end of the week.

Reuters lets us know that the economy in the fourth quarter of last year grew a tad stronger than was initially thought.

(Reuters) – The U.S. economy grew more quickly than previously thought in the fourth quarter…

Gross domestic product rose at an annualized rate of 3.1 percent, the Commerce Department said in its final estimate, revised up from 2.8 percent.

Several thoughts on this, first of all, even though 3.1% growth isn’t particularly anything to write home about, it’s better than 2.8% so you’d think that the Administration would be crowing about it. After all, it’s moving in the right direction. So why’d they release the news on Friday? Maybe it could be the rest of the information in the article, ya think? What could be wrong? Well…

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Let me start with a basic statement of facts.

• I favor legal immigration and I favor increasing the number of people allowed to legally immigrate into the US.
• Immigration must be managed in a way that brings people based on their ability assimilate and be productive citizens.
• I am unalterably opposed to illegal immigrants, from whatever their home country.
• I favor laws, at the state level if necessary, that makes housing, employment and education as close to impossible as we can make it. I favor the use of e-Verify or a similar system to validate the right of every individual to housing, employment and education and I favor harsh penalties aimed at employers, landlords/property managers and school administrators who allow illegal aliens to live, work or attend school.
• I favor an interpretation of the concept of “birthright citizenship” that grants US citizenship to children born of parents who are legal immigrants to the US and disallows citizenship to the children of illegal aliens.

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So, the public employee unions and their lap cats the Democratic Party have drawn a line in the sand with a back hoe. Union membership and representation is a God given right and since Thomas Jefferson was a union organizer the right to organize and hold the American taxpayer hostage is somewhere in the Constitution. And I can guarantee that there is no shortage of judges who will have no trouble finding said “right”. In the meantime, the Wisconson Democrats have discovered that if the Democrats have somehow been unable to either win or fix enough elections to hold majorities in state legislative bodies, they can leave the state and there will be no negtive consequences from the country club Republicans – including the Tea Party variety – and they can play the issue for the front pages and for time. The bottom line here is simple, the Democrats and the unions are at war. Republicans are just simple.

My bet is that Democrats and unions will “win” on the issue of contracts, wages, benefits and pensions. Please note the scare quotes. They’re gonna “win” in court and in the short term, in the court of public opinion. The reason they’ll win in court is because the judiciary is stacked, roughly right up to the SCOTUS, where eventually they’ll lose. Eventually. Public opinion will sway their way because they are a lot like Chinese water torture, constantly repeating lies until people believe them. People will believe them because for the most part, they are products of the US unionize education system and can’t do independent research or put two rational thoughts together in the same month. So, the Unions “win” and keep their money. Democrats “win” and keep their number one source of funds, taxpayer money passed through the hands of union members to their bosses to the DNC. I used scare quotes because, while they will almost certainly be able to work the courts and the voters for a while, they won’t beat the fundamental laws of mathematics and economics.

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Mitch Daniels has been oft mentioned as a possible candidate for President in 2012. He’s done some good things as Governor of Indiana and appears to be popular with the folks in his state. He’s also tarnished his conservative credentials a couple of times with some “missteps” like his proposal for a “truce” on social issues until we can get the fiscal problems facing us on the way to being fixed. And then there’s his opposition to a bill in the Indiana legislature that would make his state – where he eliminated some collective bargaining ability by unions by executive order – a Right To Work state.

Frankly, I can live with the concept of the truce. Mostly because in the real world, social issues – primarily abortion – isn’t going to come off the table, it’s just not going to be front and center but there will still be ongoing legislative actions to curtail the practice when the opportunity presents itself. See the Congress working to defund Planned Parenthood as an example.

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I’ve been trying to think of something to say about this but I really can’t come up with any more than this young lady (which will put my age in reference for you) has to say in her song…

The PEOPLE won one yesterday. And it is potentially a huge win. The score is now People 1, Public Employee Unions 0.

And thank you John Kasich the new Republican Governor of Ohio. That’s right, Ohio. A union stronghold state, and they booted public employee unions.

Republicans, and it must be noted that they were split on this issues, won a big victory in Ohio with the state Senate passing SB05, a bill that basically strips public employees of most collective bargaining rights. The bill now goes to the Ohio House where Republicans hold a solid majority and then on to the Governor for his signature. Cleveland.com describes the highlights of the bill this way…

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I’m sure you know all about the problems in Wisconsin with budget deficits and the wailing by public employee unions and their ilk. The same budget problems are occurring at the state level across the country, virtually no state is exempt. What they don’t all share is a Governor like Scott Walker who is confronting the problem head-on an is winning. I can assure you the eyes of the nation on are on Wisconsin and if the Republicans will just hold their ground and break the stranglehold of the unions we should be seeing similar fights won in places like Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida for starters. All, coincidentally, have Republican Governors. NEW Republican Governors.

The problem these Governors are facing is one of runaway employee and retiree costs. It’s a problem that both parties have been ducking or running from for decades. Well, it looks like it’s time to pay the piper. For those same decades that both parties have been creating the problem we see today, the media has been complicit by not bothering to pay attention and hold people accountable. That could well be changing. From yesterday’s Washington Post…

…whatever happens in Wisconsin, states and local governments across the country are faced with chronic fiscal problems rooted partly in unsustainable employee compensation systems. One way or another, they will have to be addressed, and there is only so much that can be achieved through raising revenue, since many of the most troubled states – California, New York and New Jersey – are already high-tax jurisdictions. Much of the issue is rooted in health-care costs, especially benefits for public-sector retirees. States face a combined $555 billion in unfunded retiree health coverage liabilities.

Yet in 14 states, taxpayers pick up 100 percent of the premium tab for retirees, who often collect benefits for a decade or more before going on Medicare. This is not only unfair to taxpayers, for whom free health care is usually a remote dream. It also encourages overconsumption of medical goods and services, thus raising the cost for everyone. If you want to bend the curve on health-care costs, trimming unjustifiable benefits for public-sector workers and retirees is one place to start.

Yep, the Washington Post.

I was going to highlight parts of those two paragraphs, but when I got done, the whole thing was bold.

I’m not ready to declare victory by any means, but I am ready and willing to admit that I thought I’d never see those sentiments written in the WaPo. It’s not a stirring endorsement of Governor Walker (or Governor Christie), but it’s a huge first step. Folks, it’s beginning to look like we may be on the road to fiscal conservatism, and that’s the step that is required to see the size and scope of government at all levels reduced.

There’s increasing talk of running primary challenges against “RINOs”.  In those discussions I have maintained that challengers must be credible – no more Angle/O’Donnells, thank you – and must be organized in order to mount a realistic challenge.  You can bet that the lesson of 2010 wasn’t lost on “moderate” Republican Senators, and that would be “don’t take your challenger for granted and you don’t have a ‘right’ to the seat”.

So, today is a good day in Wonderland!

From, of all places, the Washington Post, comes what I hope will be manna from heaven:

Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock will launch his primary challenge to Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) on Tuesday with the support of a majority of both the state’s 92 Republican county chairmen and its state party executive committee, he told the Fix in a recent interview.

“I feel bad that he’s going to be humiliated by this list,” Mourdock said.

Mourdock added that he believes Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) and Rep. Mike Pence (R), the party’s two leading figures in the Hoosier State, are going to stay neutral in the primary …

That such a large contingent of the party establishment should come out against or withhold support from an incumbent senator is highly unusual and reflects the difficult path ahead for Lugar in advance of the May 8, 2012, primary fight. It also suggests there is a clear path to victory for Mourdock.

Mourdock will officially launch his campaign with a six-city tour.

Read the whole article, even if it IS the WaPo, it appears to be a textbook for challenging entrenched and out-of-touch incumbents. Specifically, Mourdock is an elected official who has won statewide office, he has lined up heavyweight in-state support, appears to have the top statewide names committed to be “neutral” which is huge when dealing with an incumbent who’s been in office forever, and is having ongoing discussions with other potential candidates about not splitting the “non-Lugar” vote.

I hope Little Dick just retires, no primary fight would be better than embarrassing Dickie with a primary loss. But actually I’d rather spend the money to beat the enemy in November of 12.

Great job Indiana Republicans! I hope your wisdom in running against an incumbent is catching.

Thanks for asking. Here’s just another reason why not…

Just a little history first though. Newt Gingrich led the Republicans out of the darkness of a 40 year waltz in the desert of political meaninglessness. He was THE revolutionary in 1994. Then he was thoroughly and completely newtered [sic] by Bill Clinton over the ill fated shutdown of the federal government. Ill fated because Newt lost his nerve and he also got out-politic’d. So Newt’s been hanging around DC for the last dozen or so years looking for some kind of affirmation. He found it in being a Man of Washington, kind of a smarter version of Mike Huckabee (dead white cat where are you?).

Just to prove he’s a “not-really-a-conservative-anymore” kinda guy, in 2005 Newt stepped up to the plate with… well, you read the New York Times account:

Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, has been working alongside the wife of former President Bill Clinton, now a Democratic senator from New York, on a number of issues, and even appeared with her at a press conference on Wednesday to promote – of all things – health care legislation.

But more puzzling than that, Gingrich has been talking up Clinton’s presidential prospects in 2008, to the chagrin of conservative loyalists who once regarded him as an iconic figure. Last month, he even suggested she might capture the presidency, saying “any Republican who thinks she’s going to be easy to beat has a total amnesia about the history of the Clintons.”

OK, a quick break to vomit.

Allrightynow! Feel better? You won’t for long.

From RadioIowa:

ormer House Speaker Newt Gingrich today dismissed the “big city” critics of corn-based ethanol and suggested the biofuels industry will be able to “stand on its own” without federal subsidies once all autos are “flexible-fuel” vehicles.
[...]
Gingrich attacked critics of ethanol, saying a recent Wall Street Journal editorial on the subject was “flat out wrong.”

“I don’t mind people having an honest argument about ideology, but they ought to at least use facts that are accurate,” Gingrich said. “…This is an interest group fight in which a number of very sophisticated, big interest groups have set up a myth and are busy actively propagating the myth, but the truth is it hurts the farmer. It hurts rural America and it’s fundamentally unfair to America’s future.”

Gingrich called for new federal regulations to ensure every vehicle made in the U.S. is able to run on ethanol or methane.

Nice huh?

Hey Newt. Go away. Far, far away.

Today the Becker’s have a dog sized hole in our hearts. Franz went on to be with his brother Hans in doggie heaven. He was born on September 10, 1993 and left us on January 4, 2011. He will be greatly missed by our family but he will live on in very fond memories.

Franz was always there for each of us. He could always tell when someone was hurting and he made sure that person got an immediate dose of DogLove™. He loved each of us as only a faithful pooch can, and though sometimes it seemed that our little Maltese was high maintenance, we got the best of the deal. Always. We’ll never understand how God could put two hundred pounds of heart into a seven pound dog.

We miss you pal. You were the very best. And you loved us more than we could ever repay.

Lee Ermey works with the US Marine Corps in their “Toys for Tots” campaign every year. If you don’t love this clip of him working the crowd for Toys, well, just go someplace yellow.

No prisoners!

And to quote Lawrence of Arabia, “No prisoners!” Because there will be none.

The Christmas Day editorial in the New York Times lays out the battle ground and Al Qaeda isn’t one of the combatants. In fact, in this war Al Qaeda poses no threat. This time it’s face off between the folks who think government knows best and the peasants should pay for it and, of course, the peasants who pay.

It actually looks like The Times is having a “Come to Jesus” moment – appropriate for Christmas Day – with respect to spending by governments. The interesting part is that it’s not federal spending that is driving the train wreck, it’s the states. This is happening for a couple of reasons. First of all, many states have constitutional amendments that require a balanced budget. Secondly, states can’t print money, although I’d quibble about that one with their ability – and that of municipalities – to issue bonds. And those puppies are a who ‘nother story. Think mortgage/housing times ten. But we’ll save that for another day. The bottom line for today is that the states and cities have spent themselves into a big hole and The Times is calling for a bigger backhoe. Here are some lowlights from the article…

For most of this year, the state of Illinois has lacked the money to pay its bills. Some of its employees have been evicted from their offices for nonpayment of rent, social service groups have laid off hundreds of workers while waiting for checks, pharmacies have closed for lack of Medicaid payments. Faced with $4.5 billion in overdue payments…
[...]
Starved for revenue and accustomed to decades of overspending, many states have been overwhelmed. They are facing shortfalls of $140 billion next year. Even before the downturn, states jeopardized their futures by accumulating trillions in debt that they swept into some far-off future.

But that future is not so distant, and the crushing debt has made recovery far more difficult to achieve. As The Times reported, Illinois, California and several other states are at increasing risk of being the first states to default since the 1930s.
[...]
The most immediate cause of the states’ problems is the decline in tax revenue caused by the downturn, just as the demand for services has increased.
[...]
Many conservatives have said the revenue decline is a good incentive for states to cut their spending. That is precisely what almost all states have done, because they are legally barred from running deficits. State spending fell by 3.8 percent in the 2009 fiscal year and 7.3 percent more in the 2010 fiscal year, the only significant declines since at least the 1970s, even as the cost of education and health care rose.
[...]
But cutting spending will not affect the heaviest burden: the accumulated debt that comes from passing off the biggest problems to future generations. States and cities have nearly $3 trillion in outstanding bonds, and more than $3.5 trillion in shortfalls to pensions. Promised health benefits alone are more than $500 billion.
[...]
states are going to have to acknowledge that more effective, targeted tax increases are inevitable, and can be achieved if they are structured properly. Governors also must explain to voters that they have cut spending. The nation’s richest taxpayers just got a windfall in the federal tax deal extorted from President Obama by Republican senators. States should not shy away from asking for more help from those most able to pay.
[...]
states are going to have to acknowledge that more effective, targeted tax increases are inevitable, and can be achieved if they are structured properly. Governors also must explain to voters that they have cut spending. The nation’s richest taxpayers just got a windfall in the federal tax deal extorted from President Obama by Republican senators. States should not shy away from asking for more help from those most able to pay.

OK, so I hope you’ve got a good picture of the battle lines. Please note that The Times makes passing reference to “cutting spending” but the concept of reducing the size and reach of government is nowhere to be found in the discussion. And you can bet your last nickle that the talking points for this editorial came straight from the staff lounge at the DNC. There is no discussion of the hundreds of billions spent by the states every year because the federal government abrogates it’s responsibility on immigration law. Hopefully, thanks to men of courage like Representative Lamar Smith, that will begin to be addressed in the 112th Congress. There’s barely a peep from The Times – one line thank you – that collaboration between elected officials and unions is a major part of the problem, and even in that admission they can’t miss an opportunity to take a pot shot at Chris Christie. And the real crime in this editorial is the pap about windfall tax deals “extorted from President Obama”. Just who the hell does the New York Times think pays the taxes. Keep in the back of your mind that in addition to the following chart on personal income tax, the US has the highest corporate tax rate in the developed nations. According to the National Taxpayers Union, the tax distribution looks like this…

Personal Income Tax paid in 2008 by Adjusted Gross Income

Percentages have been rounded.

OK, so the US currently has the highest corporate tax rates in the real world and when it comes to personal income tax, the the people who actually produce the most pay 70%+ of the taxes collected and half of the people who file pay essentially zip. And let’s not forget that Democrats are continually whining about a lack of progressiveness in our tax system. And that we don’t collect enough taxes. And nary a word is said from the left about spending too darn much money even though The Times even gets that part – see the blue quote above. And yes, it’s blue for a reason.

I do have some strategy for fixing this, but this particular diary isn’t the place to haul that out. This diary is simply to put us on notice that it’s finally Game ON!! We’ll see where it goes from here, but one thing I can guarantee you, there will be blood in the streets. Let’s hope it’s just political blood, but I wouldn’t be surprised by much of anything when push comes to shove. There is one thing that neither The Times nor the Democrats get, and that’s an important thing. At the local level when taxpayers are asked to pay more, they say “NO” about every time. Even, and especially in deep blue states.

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Rep Smith and Rep King you’re doing the Lord’s work!

Politico has a great article that I think shows that Washington Republicans may be about to get something right. And they’re going to address a serious problem and actually do something that will make the problem less of a problem. In addition, it will establish that criminal behavior is criminal behavior and should be treated as such.

To digress just a tad, I am a great believer in a couple of things. The first is winning by incrementalism. In other words, when attacking a big issue you’re not likely to get a clear win in one felled swoop. You usually can, however, pick off a bunch of low hanging fruit that, if done right will build a solid foundation for moving toward other wins on the issue and you will also build credibility as you move ahead one win at a time. The second thing is directly related to the subject of this post, illegal immigration. I was – and am – opposed to SB1070 here in Arizona. I’ll support it because it’s passed the Legislature, been signed by the Governor and is currently being adjudicated through the Courts now, and I hope Arizona wins. I do believe there was a simpler and much less controversial way to achieve the same result – making life difficult for illegal aliens to they’ll go elsewhere. Don’t go after them directly, go after the people who employ them illegally, go after those who provide them housing, go after those who provide them government benefits. Take away jobs, housing and the “safety net” and you don’t much have to worry about THEM. They’ll go elsewhere. Do it nationally, they might even go home. Or to Canada. Either works for me.

OK, that said, Representative Smith made my day with this…

After weeks of speculation that he would pursue a scorched-earth immigration agenda, Smith detailed his to-do list for the first time in an interview with POLITICO — and it’s an early but important signal that the new House Republican majority plans to attack the issue of immigration through the prism of jobs, rather than red meat for the base.

Smith’s first two hearings will focus on expanding E-Verify, a voluntary electronic system for checking the immigration status of workers that President Barack Obama supports and scrutinizing the administration’s record on worksite enforcement.

“They are what I call 70 percent issues — 70 percent or more of the American people support those efforts,” Smith said. “I think they are popular across the board, and I think they will be appreciated by all American workers regardless of their ethnicity or background or anything else.”

And exactly right you are Rep. Smith. This will be enforcement that works and you’ll also have the opportunity to make sure that the Administration actually enforces new laws in this area, although to be fair, Obama’s Administration is doing more on workplace enforcement than his predecessor, and doing a pretty good job at it.

This also means that the “touchy” stuff like “birthright citizenship” won’t be talked about seriously. And that is fine with me because guess what. On January 5 a delegation from the Arizona Legislature will be in Washington talking about that very subject and they plan to enact legislation here in Arizona this year that will address it. Then the Department of Justice can take us to court again. Bottom line, birthright citizenship will get talked about a whole lot and when these subjects are discussed, the conservative opinion nearly always prevails with the American people. Remember SB1070? All the hyperventilating about it by community activists. Well, about 60% of the American people support it and wish their state would enact something similar. And there are, I think, seven states considering SB1070 type of legislation.

Mr. Smith in Washington has his strategy down pat and his tactics are solid. Remember, we’ve got a 9.8% unemployment rate, unless you count the folks who’ve stopped looking and then it’s about 17%. When asked about birthright citizenship, Smith said this…

“That is later on in this Congress; that is not our initial focus,” Smith said. “We don’t have any specific plans now in the early months to move on these issues. The focus is on creating jobs and protecting jobs.”
[...]
Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, which favors tighter restrictions on legal and illegal immigration, said Smith’s focus on E-Verify and worksite enforcement will do as much as anything else to bring order to the system.

“We think there are a lot of issues in the Internet world that people get really excited about, and in many ways, it is a side show,” Beck said, referring specifically to cutting off benefits for illegal immigrants. “It is not as important as one thing, which is taking away the jobs. So if Lamar Smith is going to focus on keeping illegal aliens out of the jobs, that is more important than all the illegal immigration stuff put together.”

From a political standpoint, framing immigration as a jobs issue makes sense, Camarota said.

“Democrats have to essentially argue it is a good idea to leave those 7 million illegal immigrants in those jobs,” Camarota said. “It puts Democrats on the defensive.”

Got that? Good for the country. A positive step getting the unemployed back to work. Bad for Democrats. Sounds like heaven to me.

Give ‘em hell Mr. Smith.

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I saw this article in the Washington Post today and it warmed the cockles of my hard, cold heart (yes Virgina, he has a heart).  But before the article, let’s do a quick review of history on the subject of [drum roll please] Guantanamo Bay Detention Center.

First, let’s hop in the WayBack Machine and drop in on CBS 60 Minutes from November 16,2008…

“Yes! I have said repeatedly I will close Guantanamo and I will do that…” Got that, right?

OK, fast forward to January 22, 2009. This would be President Obama’s first official act in office.

OK. GITMO’s gonna be gone. Let’s celebrate. Or hey, maybe we could just transfer those folk who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time someplace and put that Bush and that Cheney guy in there.

And now [drumroll] we have today and Baghdad Bob Gibbs…

Sunday Rundown: A quick wrap-up of the Sunday talk shows.

CNN: STATE OF THE UNION – Gibbs: Guantanamo not closing any time soon

It’s “probably gonna be a while” before the prison at Guantanamo Bay closes, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said. He suggested that the influx of Republicans in Congress could make fulfilling Obama’s campaign promise more difficult.

“I think part of this depends on the Republicans’ willingness to work with the administration on this,” he said.

Well, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, excuse me, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. OK, so hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Oh my.

So BB, tell me something. Where the hell were you guys for the last two freaking years? You’ve had two years to close that sucker, and let me remind you that your boss signed that Executive Order (maybe it was a “Community Organizer” Order, huh?) on his first full day in office. You all said something like “the American People are behind us” and you couldn’t get THIS done? Shutting down a facility with a couple of hundred people in it. No wonder the economy is still a wreck. Etc.

Maybe Darryl Issa should investigate this one for ya Barrack. Although he’ll likely be busy with “other” stuff, still, you could ask. Maybe on bended knee, like chatting with a Saudi King or a Japanese Prime Minister.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Since you’re a politician, I won’t bother with the “shut up” part…”

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been whining about Jan Brewer, well it seems like forever. My complaints are pretty simple.

• She was SoS before being elevated to Governor upon Janet Nappy’s move to DC.
• While she’s is a competent manager/administrator, she’s over her head in a job that requires leadership.
• Her initial response to budget shortfalls was “raise taxes”.
• Her current budget is mish-mash of tax increases (Prop100), one time fed $$ and small cuts.
• The budget she got through the legislature last year, I projected would be riddled with problems because it didn’t address the structural problems in financing the state.

OK, here we go again. The AZ Republic has the beginning of the wailing that will reach the level of pain in no time about the budget problems we’ve got in the Grand Canyon State. Hmmm. Grand Canyon. That’s an apt analogy to our state’s fiscal condition.

Lawmakers must erase an $825 million deficit in this fiscal year’s budget, compressing a year’s worth of cuts into a few months.

Well, that would be Strike One…

Federal stimulus money runs out at the end of the budget year on June 30, adding to a hole of about $1.4 billion.

Ummm, Strike Two…

GOP Gov. Jan Brewer and the Republican majority in the Legislature have ruled out tax increases, and other options for balancing the budget are nearly tapped out.

Need I say it? OK, I will. When a politician rules something out…

But there is some room for hope, but it will require someone to step up and provide some serious leadership. It won’t be Brewer. And let me be really clear right now. Jan Brewer got thrust onto the national stage last year with the advent of SB1070, a law she had nothing to do with drafting, had absolutely no say or impact in getting passed and left her constituents wondering if she’d sign it until the moment she actually did sign it. It’s obvious to me, crusty old opinionated fart that I am, that her political advisers managed to convince her that her only shot at winning the primary (there were three opponents and it was close in February, very close, and Brewer had big negatives because of her “performance” on the budget) was to sign SB1070. She did. And she read her lines well for the national media in the aftermath. But now cometh reality. The elephant in the room. The budget.

Brewer dug a deep hole for us last time around with the use of Prop100, a “temporary” sales tax increase – three years, runs out in 2013 – and the use of $1.4B in “stimulus” money. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to depart from the subject at hand once again. Arizona’s economy is a wreck. Not as bad as our neighbor to the west, but it’s a wreck. We get $1.4B in fresh printing press output from the Feds and does she put it to work helping businesses make real jobs? No. She gives it to the education department as a prop. Chris Christie or Mitch Daniels she ain’t.

Oh well, back on track. We’ve got a big problem and it’s actually bigger than the article lets on because they don’t bother to note that the Prop100 tax increase will go away in two years. Bottom line, we need structural reform in Arizona government. And here’s the interesting parts…

“What we are walking into is major structural-deficit reduction,” said House Speaker Kirk Adams, R-Mesa. “This is no longer a $5 million solution here or a $10 million cut there. It’s a $1 billion decision.”
[...]
…Brewer and legislative leaders have indicated they will have to target education and health care – the two biggest pieces of the budget.
[...]
The Legislature also has 37 new lawmakers, and they will have to quickly learn the intricacies of the state budget.

So, bottom up, I hope to God that those new lawmakers don’t take lessons from our current leadership who were happy as clams last time around with no structural changes, increased taxes and federal play money.

Next, as far as education is concerned, the state university system needs quality time with an axe. Way too much money is spent on administration and we need serious increases in tuition. Hopefully, if students (parents?) end up paying significantly more for their education the product will improve. And a good start would be to eliminate every department/major that uses the words “Studies” or “Science” in their title. Those degrees only qualify budding activists to go to grad school so they can do research on various classes of victims at the expense of the US Department of Education. And then there is health care spending. It’s going to be interesting to see what gets done about that at the state level given the current mess at the national level. Our legislature will be operating in somewhat of a real vacuum when they deal with it, and make no mistake, deal with they must.

Finally, the Speaker of the AZ House is calling for structural reform. We’ll see. And then, there’s the standard pap (yeah, I’m a cynic) on taxes…

And because these leaders want to cut taxes to get Arizona’s economy rolling again…

Again, we’ll see. And let’s not forget “the children”. The Republic is starting the drum beat about those people who will be “hurt” by the drastic cuts necessary at the state level if we don’t woman-up and raise taxes on the rich (my interpretation of their wording)…

The school nurse is becoming an endangered species.

State parks have closed, or are limping along thanks to local donations.

And nearly 100 Arizonans lost medical transplant coverage.

And then there’s the standard one-off’s of individuals who are being devastated by the current level of inadequate cuts. I won’t bother putting them here, you can read the article. Have a barf bag handy. The medical transplant issue has already made headlines in the New York Times, so you just know the coverage will be national and it will be amazing. The one line item I hope is NOT touched is the purchase of one spine for Governor Brewer. The cynic in me thinks that will be the first to go however.

Oh well. You can bet we’ll be following this.

Related Articles

• Arizona Gov. Brewer wants Medicaid Waiver To Reduce Medicaid Rolls To Lower Costs (ducknetweb.blogspot.com)
• Jan Brewer Medicaid Cuts Prompt Dire Calls For Life-Saving Coverage & Criticism Of ‘Brewercare’ (huffingtonpost.com)
• Death by Budget Cuts: Arizona Governor Slashes Funding for Transplant Program (health.change.org)

…and [shocked] in Detroit!

The people who elect guys like this are simply stupid. Who the hell dresses them in the morning and feeds them? Well, for a partial answer, “we” feed them because most of them are either on welfare or unemployment. From the Detroit Free Press…

Kwame Kilpatrick & his Homies.

A federal grand jury today indicted former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, his father and three former top aides on racketeering charges, accusing them of turning the mayor’s office into a criminal enterprise to enrich themselves, families and friends.

Besides the now-jailed former mayor, the 38-count indictment names his father, Bernard Kilpatrick, city contractor Bobby Ferguson, former top Kilpatrick aide Derrick Miller and former water department chief Victor Mercado in one of the largest public corruption investigations ever in the City of Detroit.

Needless to say, their attorneys are vigorously denying the charges and swearing they’ll fight them. Or that they had no immediate comment. Heh.

It’s worth remembering just who Kwame Kilpatrick is. He was the mayor of Detroit at the time when Barack Obama was just a fledgling US Senator looking for support out there in “the community”. Kwame was very supportive. And Barack had nice things to say about him…

You really need to stop right here and watch that video if you didn’t. It’s freaking amazing. Not only is Barack Obama not qualified to run a lemonade stand, his judgment on people sucks big time.

The Freedom Defense Fund produced a great ad based on this idiot (that would be the “Kwame Idiot”)…

Where do these people find folks dumb enough to vote for them? Oh yeah…

Yesterday we wrote about the LtCol who was being tried for refusing to deploy because President Obama hadn’t produced his birth certificate. The Col has gotten a whole lot of play in certain flaky circles because of his refusal about seven months ago. From an article in today’s Seattle Times…

BALTIMORE — An Army physician who was convicted of refusing to go to Afghanistan because he questioned whether Barack Obama was eligible to be president said Wednesday he was wrong to disobey orders and would deploy to a war zone “tomorrow.”

Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, of Greeley, Colo., faces up to 3 ½ years in a military jail and dismissal from the Army after being found guilty Wednesday. If dismissed, he would forfeit his annual salary of nearly $90,000 and a pension.

Well, so much for principles.

Oh and Col Lakin, or is that Mr. Lakin? Think of THIS as “home”.

In the ‘90s we had the opportunity to defeat the agenda of the Left on the issues and we blew it.

By way of some history, the Clintons came into office looking to remake the country in the image of Barack Obama. Or Hillary Clinton. Or somebody other than The Founders. Their first mistake was HillaryCare. The signature initiative of the Left is, and has been for decades, the nationalization of US health care. The Clintons got their heads handed to them over that issue, and health care was to be only the first shot at the American Dream. In the next election – 1994 – Republicans took the House for the first time in 40 years. And then Hell froze over.

Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich got into a staring match over shutting down the government and lost. They compounded that with forgetting about defeating the Left’s agenda and made it personal with the attempted impeachment of Bill for reasons that had nothing to do with pubic policy (more like pubic policy) and gave the master politician the ammunition he needed to make complete fools of the Republicans while uniting the country (and every Democrat in existence) behind him to fend off a conviction in the US Senate – that was NEVER going to happen anyway – and, more importantly for this discussion, he was able to take the fight away from the agenda. We lost big time and the Left won. We lost the opportunity to drive a stake through the heart of the socialist agenda that President Obama has carried into office and is being substantially more successful with than the Clintons could have ever dreamt.

We have round two with the Obama Administration.

Actually round two consists of two unique battles with the fruitcake wing of the right. Once again we’ve got folks calling for impeachment. I’m not going to address this particular rerun of total foolishness beyond noting that come hell-or-high-water, no matter the charges, you’ve got to be able to count on two thirds of the US Senate voting in favor of a conviction before it’s even rational to discuss it. That will not be happening any time in the next two years even if the President is caught holding meetings with OBL in the basement of the West Wing. Impeachment is a total non-starter.

The second issue does garner some attention and that’s Obama’s birth certificate, or lack thereof. There is a hard core group of folks – starting with people in Hillary’s POTUS campaign – who think Mr. Obama hasn’t met the “natural born citizen” qualification for Presidents as outlined in the Constitution. They are a pretty noisy group. They are also totally unhinged. They’ve seized on a peripheral issue – that incidentally has been decided by both the State of Hawaii and the US Electoral College – that again allows a socialist leaning executive to personalize opposition to his agenda and takes the discussion off the agenda. And let’s be clear, on the agenda we’re winning. We need to keep the focus on the agenda and make the stake stick this time.

Which brings us to today’s exercise in complete stupidity. From the Baltimore Sun…

By Childs Walker, The Baltimore Sun Terrence Lakin is one of the fervent band of Americans who doubt that President Barack Obama was born in the United States.

The catch is that Lakin is an Army lieutenant colonel who refused to report for deployment to Afghanistan because he questions Obama’s credentials to serve as commander in chief.
[…]
Lakin’s stance, made public when he refused to report in April, has made him a hero to the “birther” movement. Birthers say Obama, the first African-American president, was not born in Honolulu in August 1961, and so fails to meet the constitutional requirement that the president be a “natural born citizen.”

Hawaii officials say they have verified Obama’s original 1961 birth certificate…

Several points:

1. What part of “Hawaii officials say they have verified Obama’s original 1961 birth certificate” don’t you get?
2. What part of Barack Obama was elected by the Electoral College and was sworn in as the 44th President by Chief Justice John Roberts don’t you get?
3. Assuming you could prove your contention that the President was NOT born in the US and does not meet the Constitutional requirement for a natural born citizen, so what? Exactly what can be done? Don’t even bother saying “impeach him”, see above.

And, the bottom line once again, we are WINNING on the issues. Let’s not get distracted by things that, in the long run (or the short run for that matter) do not matter. We may actually have the ability, if we stay focused on things that matter, to render the Left – at least the far left – unelectable for a generation. Do not get distracted by these fools…

And, with respect to the LtCol, the Army is absolutely doing the right thing. He is utterly wrong, he knows it and he’s simply trying to make a point. He should have a Dishonorable Discharge and prison time to consider just how well he’s made his “point”.

Earlier in the week, we talked about a group of parents in Compton, CA who finally got fed up with the lousy school their kids were forced to go to by the educators and union leaders who are sure they are smarter than parents. They took advantage of a new law that gave these parents the right to swap out their current “public” school for a charter school. And, the California Teachers Association was up in arms.

Well, yesterday it seems that one of the chief toadys who’s been rolling over for “public employee” unions, especially the CTA, made a really interesting statement.

In a Sacramento address to state leaders, Villaraigosa — himself a longtime teachers union employee before launching a career in public office — declared that education in Los Angeles stands at “a critical crossroads,” and he assailed United Teachers Los Angeles for resisting change.

During the last five years, the mayor said, union leaders have stood as “one unwavering roadblock to reform.” He called for change in contentious areas such as tenure, teacher evaluations and seniority…

Let’s be clear. Villaraigosa is no Tea Party Patriot. He’s an open borders, union accommodating Marxist who is in lockstep with RexO™. He’s a lefty’s lefty. If he’s laying down a marker on the union, there’s something going on, and it could be big.

I certainly hope so, public employee unions are not only the financial death of government, teacher’s unions in particular are the most onerous. Their work rules are the difference between decent schools and the bombed-out skeletons that pass for a place to educate your kids that exist in every city in the US. And when I say “bombed-out” I’m not talking about the physical plant, I’m talking about the curriculum, the administration and the teachers who fail year after year to actually give the children in the US an education that is useful in a competitive marketplace. Instead, we continue to see schools give diplomas to kids that can’t read or do simple math and are basically not qualified for an entry level job in the real world.

So, I say, Go get ‘em Anthony!