As readers here may be aware, I have transferred the bulk of my blogging and writing energies over to the New Ledger, which was founded by RedState alumni and which features a number of us there. I had sought, initially, to continue to post activist pieces here, while at the same time, blogging about politics, policy, and various other eclectic issues over at A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days, which is lodged at the New Ledger, and contributing long-form pieces for the New Ledger, all in conjunction with my responsibilities as a Senior Editor there.

Upon reflection, however, it has become clear that it would be best for me, for the New Ledger, and for RedState, whose own mission is changing, to throw my energies fully and completely into my work at TNL. As such, this shall be my final post at RedState as a Contributor. Effective upon publication of this post, I shall resign the position I have held for nearly five years.

I wish to thank Joshua Treviño for having helped found RedState and for his vision and dedication to the site. He, along with Ben Domenech, Thomas Crown, Clayton Wagar, and Mike Krempasky, were responsible for extending an invitation to me to start writing here since the very day the site launched in July, 2004. I am most grateful to them for their kindness and graciousness. I shall be working with Ben, Clayton, Dan McLaughlin, Francis Cianfrocca, and Leon Wolf over at the New Ledger. I am sure that over time, other familiar names will join our ranks, which I look forward to.

I am confident that RedState will achieve the goals Erick Erickson has worked so hard to attain as the site’s CEO. My thanks extend to all of the fellow Contributors who honored me with their friendship, their affection, their kindness, and their support. I shall, of course, make known to them personally the depth of my gratitude, though I am certain that my small and meager efforts at eloquence shall do no justice to the value of the many gifts they have seen fit to bestow upon me in the course of our friendships. I hope, and trust that they know that even if my words of thanks seem poor and inadequate, I shall try by deed to ensure that the sentiments in my heart speak more eloquently to my appreciation than mere words ever could or will.

I thank all of the RedState community for your kind attention, readership, encouragement, constructive criticism, wit, humor, and activism. Because of your participation in the affairs of our country, what Ben Franklin said about our Republic remains true; it is symbolized by a rising, and not a setting sun. Always remember that whatever the level of cynicism that may sometimes surround politics, policy, and current events in general, civic participation is a noble and glorious thing. And civic participation matters. My life, and the life of my family has been influenced greatly and dramatically by politics–especially the politics associated with my family’s decision to emigrate to America, and my great good fortune to have been a citizen of the United States since birth.

No matter what anyone tells you, never think for a moment that politics and civic participation is irrelevant. It is not. By your enthusiasm, your skill, your intellect, your dedication, and your fervent and informed love of country, you will help strengthen and renew the American compact, and America itself. I hope to have continued interaction with as many of you as possible over at my blog, and I do hope that you will visit the New Ledger as part of your daily online reading as often as possible.

Last, but certainly not least, I thank Mark Kilmer for his friendship in life, and for his lasting inspiration, as I seek to be a better man.

Farewell and good luck to all of you.

Meet Susan Crawford, the co-chair for the Federal Communications Commission transition team for Barack Obama, and special assistant to the President in the Obama Administration (she has a blog here). A former law professor at the University of Michigan–one presumes that she has either departed permanently, or is on leave–Professor Crawford has some interesting ideas concerning the Internet. Namely, she wants it treated like a public utility (subscription required):

Crawford stressed that the stimulus money is a down payment on future government investments in the Internet. “We should do a better job as a nation of making sure fast, affordable broadband is as ubiquitous as electricity, water, snail mail or any other public utility,” she said.

Of course, the use of the term “public utility” denotes nationalization:

Most of the time when I talk about the need to treat internet access like a utility, I get amused smiles.

That’s the thing we have to change — the idea that it’s unthinkable (amusing, even) that we could take this increasingly singular but private relationship of people to broadband internet access and make it a public relationship.

But end-users really don’t care whether their provider is a cable company or a telephone company — they think they’re getting the internet. They’re probably not even aware that a private company is providing internet access to them. And there are even a few people out there in the U.S., despite our best efforts, who don’t understand that these private companies have every incentive to prioritize and manipulate their way into showing us “channels” instead of the internet.

One wonders whether the Obama Administration’s penchant for nationalizing anything and everything under the sun will ever be abated.

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Really, I do. It’s a wonderful country, with a great many historic attractions, and the people are much nicer than myth would suggest.

I just don’t want to conduct domestic and economic policy in the United States in the same way that the French conduct domestic and economic policy in France. Neither does Veronique de Rugy:

Everyone complains about corruption, but . . . well . . . it’s not that no one does anything about it. Rather, it’s more that traditional anti-corruption efforts are so ineffective. We can pass laws until the cows come home, but all the laws in the world have done nothing to curb corruption.

Dan Mitchell makes these points and then offers an alternative anti-corruption plan–shrink the size of government. It’s a good plan, and it will most certainly work better than what we have tried thus far in terms of combating corruption. Take a look:

The tea parties that went on to commemorate Genuflection To The IRS Day have been a smashing success. A whole host of demonstrations popped up throughout the country and attracted large crowds. Public dissatisfaction with the bailout culture, massive deficit spending, and the general assault against free market capitalism manifested itself and made its presence felt in the national media. Try as some of the various news organizations did to downplay the effect of the tea parties, it cannot be denied that they made an impact.

Naturally, this success worries the defenders of Big Government; so much so that while pretending not to be concerned about the effect of the tea parties, opponents of small government have gone on the warpath to make their disdain clear. It’s a curious sight to see well-educated, fairly erudite individuals veer wildly from “these tea parties don’t matter in the long run and are beneath our attention” to “HOW DARE THESE . . . THESE . . . TEABAGGERS (hahahaha, I made a funny!) EXERCISE THEIR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS LIKE THIS?!?!” The effect would be hysterical if the issue weren’t so serious.

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While I will continue to write at RedState concerning activism issues, the bulk of my blogging is going to be done over at A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days, which is lodged as part of The New Ledger. I would be delighted to see old RedState friends there.

I have no problem using taxes as a way to get rid of certain, discrete negative externalities, but anything beyond that is asking for trouble. So it is more than a little bizarre to find out that there are Florida Republicans behind a $1 per pack increase in cigarette taxes. Cigarettes are nasty things, but if you are trying–as these Florida Republicans are–to raise revenues via cigarette taxes, then you are bound to be disappointed in a big way.

The policy failures inherent in this approach are bad enough. The political failure is that we have Republicans acting like Democrats. I thought that the past two election cycles were sufficient to show that when Republicans run as Democrats, they lose. Evidently not.

Let’s have Congress investigate itself:

While Congress has been flaying companies for giving out bonuses while on the government dole, lawmakers have a longstanding tradition of rewarding their own employees with extra cash — also courtesy of taxpayers.

Capitol Hill bonuses in 2008 were among the highest in years, according to LegiStorm, an organization that tracks payroll data. The average House aide earned 17% more in the fourth quarter of the year, when the bonuses were paid, than in previous quarters, according to the data. That was the highest jump in the eight years LegiStorm has compiled payroll information.

Total end-of-year bonuses paid to congressional staffers are tiny compared with the $165 million recently showered on executives of American International Group Inc., which is being propped up by billions of dollars of U.S. government subsidies. But Capitol Hill bonuses provide a notable counterpoint to the populist rhetoric and sound bites emanating from Washington these past weeks.

Last year alone, more than 200 House lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, awarded bonuses totaling $9.1 million to more than 2,000 staff members, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of office-disbursement forms. The money comes out of taxpayer-funded office budgets, and is surplus cash that would otherwise be forfeited if not spent.

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Seeking to convince us that “Speaking Freely, Biden Finds Influential Role,” the New York Times, instead, makes clear that the Vice President’s role is anything but influential.

Consider:

Top aides say it has become customary for Mr. Obama to solicit Mr. Biden’s opinion at the end of meetings. But his views by no means always carry the day. At one January meeting to discuss the budget, Mr. Biden railed that the government was in no fiscal shape to pursue a health care overhaul this year — to the dismay of many present and others who heard about it.

The vice president later backed off, but Mr. Obama — who disagreed strongly with the view — has come to see Mr. Biden as a useful contrarian in the course of decision-making.

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Harry Reid thinks that it is perfectly fine to filibuster judges appointed by Republican Presidents, but that it would be a sin against the Lord to filibuster Democratic health care reform plans. The fact that Reid is a Democrat probably has something to do with this, though you will never catch Reid admitting that. Not only is the Senate Majority Leader a hypocrite, he also is deluded enough to think that others have not caught and will not catch him on his hypocrisy.

Oh, and Reid engaged in more name-calling in which the facts undermine the insults–as Ed Whelan points out, it’s kind of bizarre to claim that one was fooled by John Roberts when one voted against Roberts come confirmation time. Not that I think Harry Reid is difficult to fool, of course, but in this case, Roberts did nothing to fool Reid. Reid is just fooling himself. He does that a lot.

Peter Wallison doesn’t toe the line of conventional wisdom when it comes to discussing the cause of the financial crisis. That’s a roundabout way of saying that he speaks truth:

One may well think so after having read this:

Just as the economic news was relentlessly negative until the last few days, poll numbers for Republicans were horrific for months. So the GOP should be heartened by the first encouraging polling news it has received perhaps since Lehman Brothers defaulted in mid-September: Republicans have pulled even with Democrats on the generic congressional ballot test, according to a survey by a respected pair of firms.

In the new National Public Radio poll conducted by the Democratic polling company Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and its Republican counterpart, Public Opinion Strategies, 42 percent of the 800 likely voters surveyed March 10 to 14 said that if the next congressional election were held today they would vote for the Republican candidate; an identical percentage of respondents said they would vote for the Democratic one. For several years, Democrats held a substantial lead on this question.

Democrats still outnumbered Republicans in terms of party identification in this poll by 6 points, 45 percent to 39 percent. Democrats also favored their own party’s congressional candidates 83 percent to 7 percent. But voters who call themselves independents gave GOP candidates the edge by 14 points, 38 percent to 24 percent. And self-identified Republicans supported their own party’s candidates 85 percent to 3 percent.

Republican pollster Glen Bolger, who worked on the survey for Public Opinion Strategies, says that this is the first time since 2004 that he has seen independents favoring Republicans on the generic ballot test. Although he concedes that poll participants agreed — by margins of 6 to 11 points — with Democrats more than Republicans on each of the issues tested, he contends that the generic question’s results are “evidence that voters, particularly independents, are worried that they overcorrected in the 2006/2008 elections combined, and now have more of a liberal slant to government than they want. They want change but with checks and balances.”

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Just an FYI for longtime readers: I am going to tend to my own blog for a while. It may not be all that long in the grand scheme of things before I get back to the RedState front page, but those who are interested in following my writing can find me at my personal site.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled RedState.

That–as I have argued in the past–is what the Obama Administration is doing. And yes, I am pretty sure that the Administration knows that the more it augments the sense of economic crisis, the more it improves its chances of passing its economic program.

This, of course, makes the Administration’s public relations efforts deeply cynical. Is it too much to hope that it gets called on its fearmongering sometime soon?

While some may have thought that the Obama tax plan would sail through Congress relatively unopposed, the reality is turning out to be somewhat different:

President Barack Obama’s call to raise taxes on high earners and greenhouse gas polluters met fierce opposition Tuesday from congressional Republicans and also a few Democrats. “I would never want to adversely affect anything that is charitable or good,” Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said of Obama’s call to limit high-income taxpayers’ itemized deductions for charitable donations and mortgage interest.

When the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee says nyet to the plan–fallen figure though Charlie Rangel is–you have to think that there are problems. (On this issue, be sure to check out Ben Domenech’s piece on what he justly calls “The War on Philanthropy.) More problems with Democratic defections are detailed here.

Other problems may stem from this passage:

. . . the Treasury secretary acknowledged that consumers could face higher electric bills because Obama would impose fees on greenhouse gas producers, including power plants that burn fossil fuels, by auctioning off carbon pollution permits. The goal is to reduce the emissions blamed for global warming while raising a projected $646 billion over 10 years.

“Now, if people don’t change how they use energy, then they will face higher costs for energy,” Geithner said.

“Nice saving account you have there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.” Effectively, the Tim Geithner is threatening people with an energy tax. Is this part of the supposed tax cut for 95% of the population?

“The Audacity of Hype.” An excerpt:

Continuing the tradition he established back when he was Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Peter Orszag, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget has started a blog. I applaud this move if — if — it is meant to promote transparency. But while Orszag is a smart man and a formidable policy player, his blog appears to be more determined to spin than it is to enlighten.

Read it all for a discussion of Administration tax policy. For as we all know, delving deeply into tax policy is the ultimate thrill.

My thoughts on the shape and nature of such an opposition can be found at the Arena.

The joy of writing at a place like the Arena is that one has the opportunity to learn a great deal from smart and talented writers. Of course, from time to time, you get . . . well . . . people like Maggie Mahar, whose strawman arguments I sought to rebut . . . with some help, of course.

High earners are planning to reduce their incomes so that they will not have to pay as much in taxes.

This, of course, not only means that some people will take an income hit. It also means that an important segment of the population will be less productive economically. Cumulatively, this could have a very bad effect on the economy–especially when one considers its current parlous state.

“Heck of a job,” indeed. A purposeful economic saboteur could not do a better job at undermining the economy than this Administration is doing.

Detailed here. Note the reason why Pelosi dislikes House Republican Whip Eric Cantor:

Pelosi has good personal relationship with House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). But members of her leadership cadre are starting to really dislike Cantor, despite their public pose of studied indifference. Part of the reason: Cantor is employing many of the same techniques Pelosi used so successfully to torture former House Speaker Dennis Hastert when she was the Democratic whip in 2002 and 2003.

It remains to be seen if Cantor’s power-of-“no” philosophy will work — congressional approval ratings have actually spiked on the stimulus — but he’s gotten traction by nitpicking Pelosi’s proposals and magnifying the majority’s blunders.

Sauce for the goose . . .

House Democrats have killed off the school choice program currently going on in DC. If Senate Democrats and the White House–headed by a President who gets to send his kids to private school while poorer families in DC have to depend on the tender mercies of Congress and the White House to do the same–follow suit, the program will end. The Washington Post puts matters well in its editorial. An excerpt:

. . . the debate unfolding on Capitol Hill isn’t about facts. It’s about politics and the stranglehold the teachers unions have on the Democratic Party. Why else has so much time and effort gone into trying to kill off what, in the grand scheme of government spending, is a tiny program? Why wouldn’t Congress want to get the results of a carefully calibrated scientific study before pulling the plug on a program that has proved to be enormously popular? Could the real fear be that school vouchers might actually be shown to be effective in leveling the academic playing field?

The message coming out of the House Democratic Caucus is a simple one: The teachers’ unions are more important than students and their families. That’s HopeAndChange for you when it comes to education.