Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, & Wyoming.

Those being the four states that are not running a deficit right now. The relative sizes of the rest can be seen via this handy visual tool:


Via @MelissaTweets

I’d make more commentary on this, except that I can sum it up as stop spending money you don’t have, you idiots. And that is one of those binary things: people either already get that, or they don’t. Either way, there’s not much point for follow-up material. I will note, though, that the ‘top’ five deficit-ridden states (who make up 52% of the total deficit, interestingly enough) have one thing in common: their state legislatures are all dominated by Democratic politicians*.

Yes. Shocking.

Moe Lane

*With the sort-of exception of New York’s; their State Assembly is run by Democrats, and their Senate is currently being run by nobody at all

Crossposted to RedState.

The slow-motion collapse of Democratic Detroit.

This cannot be sugar-coated, and I have no desire to even try.

Retailers Head for Exits in Detroit

There was a time early in the decade when downtown Detroit was sprouting new cafes and shops, and residents began to nurture hopes of a rebound. But lately, they are finding it increasingly tough to buy groceries or get a cup of fresh-roast coffee as the 11th largest U.S. city struggles with the recession and the auto-industry crisis.

No national grocery chain operates a store here. A lack of outlets that sell fresh produce and meat has led the United Food and Commercial Workers union and a community group to think about building a grocery store of its own.

[snip]

The city’s 22.8% unemployment rate is among the highest in the U.S.; 30% of residents are on food stamps.

Continue reading The slow-motion collapse of Democratic Detroit.

Winning with ‘No.’

From last week’s article on the growing awareness of Democratic corruption, by the always-interesting Jen Rubin:

…with the growth of government and the enormous amount of cash sloshing through Washington, the corruption problem is about to get worse. The stimulus money could, according to the FBI, be the breeding ground for its own crime wave. If the experts are right and 10% of the $787B stimulus plan will be lost to fraud and abuse, then $80B worth of graft and the congressmen, officials, lobbyists, and donors with their fingers in the pie will make fodder for plenty of headlines — just in time for the 2010 races.

No wonder the MSM is nervously sounding the alarm. There is the prospect that the age of “liberal dominance” could come screeching to a halt before it’s even gotten up to speed. Not only does it portend an electoral train wreck and loss of a governing liberal majority, but it sheds doubt on the notion that government was the knight in shining armor needed to ride to the rescue when the free market “failed.” If bigger and bigger government gets us more and more crooks and tens of billions in fraud, then maybe there is a better way to go than inflating the size and scope of the federal government.

Continue reading Winning with ‘No.’

Of *course* ‘Leaders balk at setting up truth panel.’

‘Truth’ is precisely what the Democrats don’t want right now.

Senate Democratic leaders oppose the immediate establishment of a “Truth Commission” to probe harsh interrogation tactics as they face pressure to reveal what they knew of practices the Obama administration has since labeled “torture.”

While nearly all Democrats this week backed the creation of a special commission to probe the causes of the financial crisis, and while the party previously supported the independent 9/11 Commission, its leaders on Thursday balked at the idea of taking a similar approach to unearthing answers about the controversial interrogation methods approved by the Bush administration.

There’s actually a fairly significant difference between investigating ‘the causes of the financial crisis’ and investigating ‘controversial interrogation methods’: no, not the fact that Democrats were only up to their eyeballs in one or the other. They were, of course, heavily involved in both. No, the difference is that in the case of the financial crisis there is actually a national consensus that the end result was bad. The same consensus does not agree on the interrogation methods*. Continue reading Of *course* ‘Leaders balk at setting up truth panel.’

Rasmussen: Majority of country worries government will do too much.

I would quibble with the results here: it implies that the notion that we’ve already done too much already to fix the economy isn’t a legitimate answer. Still, this report will not be welcome news for the administration:

52% Worry Government Will Do Too Much to Fix Economy

[snip]

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 52% of the nation’s Likely Voters now worry that the government will do too much. That’s up from 50% a month ago and 43% in mid-February. It’s the highest level of concern measured since Barack Obama was elected president.

The number who worry that the government will do too little has fallen sharply to 31%. That’s down nine points from 40% a month ago and 12 points from 43% two months ago.

…which is only fitting. When the economy went into a tailspin last fall, the current administration presented itself as the best choice to repair our financial problems. When they were elected, the expectation was that they would actually engage in activities that would repair our financial problems, and in a nonpartisan, inclusive manner. Instead, we got: Never Waste A Crisis. I Won. The Democratic Party’s Pork Wish List. It’s Not Our Fault. Tax Hikes On The Lower Class*. The Great Expanding Budget Deficit. Let’s Repeat That Last One AgainOne More Time, So That It Sinks In. Continue reading Rasmussen: Majority of country worries government will do too much.

Phosphate smuggling in Washington!

It is the little things that grate.  Or get stuck to the plate of one’s ire.

Ace of Spades HQ has the details. What’s happening here is that Washington State Democrats have banned phosphates from dish detergents because it’s cheaper than upgrading their water treatment plants – excuse me, ‘better for the environment’ – in Spokane County as a test bed for a banning of the stuff statewide in 2010. Unfortunately, there’s a reason why they put phosphates in dish detergent: it softens ‘hard’ water, which the Pacific Northwest has an abundance of (it can be softened at the water treatment plants, but, again, the Democrats think that banning phosphates is cheaper). Hard water + no phosphates in dish detergents = dishwashers don’t work properly – so people are now getting into their cars and driving to Idaho, where people are happy to sell them all the phosphate-enriched dish detergent that they want. And anything else, while they’re there. They can go to other parts of the state, too – but that obviously will go away next year. How long it takes before Washington Democrats close the borders to phosphate smugglers is anybody’s guess; I’m picking 2011.

So, to recap: a good-intentioned policy position by the Washington Democratic party has instead degraded quality of life in its target area, increased the use of burned hydrocarbons in its target area, cost local retailers business in its target area, and is not being particularly successful in its stated objective. And yet there is no indication that this program is being recognized as a failure: so it’s still pretty much on-track to be adopted statewide anyway. And if you actually don’t like having food encrusted to your plate, you’re expected to pretty much suffer. And if you complain, you’ll probably have to listen to an inevitable – and smug – lecture from somebody who thinks that he knows how to organize your life better than you do.

Isn’t one-party rule grand, Washington State?

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Senate to discreetly shut down House AIG bill of attainder.

House to gratefully let them.

They may call it “delay,” but they mean “eliminate” – and the Washington Post is happy to assist with putting this story on the seventh page.

Senate Will Delay Action on Punitive Tax on Bonuses

Jarred by a cool reception from the White House and fears of unintended consequences across the financial world, Senate leaders are likely to delay until late next month legislation to punitively tax bonuses at banks and investment firms that receive federal aid.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) announced last week that the Senate would move ahead with the legislation as soon as possible, and he attempted to bring the bill to the floor Thursday night. But he revised that timetable yesterday, saying that the chamber will spend this week debating a national-service bill before turning to a long-scheduled showdown over the budget for fiscal 2010. With just two weeks to go until Congress departs for a spring recess, action on the tax measure would be unlikely before late April.

That will effectively kill the bill, because everyone in Washington is betting that a month should be enough time for the populace to have something else besides the Democrat-inspired and Democrat-encouraged AIG bonus PR fiasco to focus upon; which is not a bad bet, actually. Already people are starting to notice that the Democrats’ House bill has a good deal of faux-populist outrage associated with it; and as Glenn Reynolds over in Forbes is pointing out, the Democrats are going to be soon having to hit up the very people that they’re currently demonizing for campaign contributions. Time to let this story die, and that’s why there’s a Senate in the first place. Continue reading Senate to discreetly shut down House AIG bill of attainder.

Good job getting Sen. Corker mad there, Sen. Nelson.

In response to this story about how supposedly Senator Nelson of Nebraska had called in Senator Corker of Tennessee to try to get a “bipartisan solution” (read: “Republican cover”) for the Democrats’ debt bill, Sen. Corker’s office contacted Instapundit with the following:

UPDATE: A Corker spokesperson emails: “As I’ve told Fox, we were invited late yesterday to a meeting in Sen. Ben Nelson’s office and were surprised to learn by reading the news this morning that by accepting the invitation we had joined a gang. That’s not accurate and we did not attend the meeting.”

I repeat.  The Democrats own this one.  Because you won, remember?

Crossposted at RedState.

Yes, Mr. President. You won. How’s your debt bill coming along?

I would like to thank both the President of the United States of America, and the liberal Democratic group Americans United for Change, for their plans to remind three critical swing states that the Democratic Party is pushing a debt package that only 42% – and dropping – of the country believes in, and that a majority of independent voters oppose. But there’s something even odder about this strategy: Continue reading Yes, Mr. President. You won. How’s your debt bill coming along?

This Hill story’s getting hit by Drudge…

Remember this event, the next time a Democrat holds out his hand to you.

[Update: Video added, and the Hill’s Blog Briefing Room is back up, so I’m cutting back the article.]

…and, given the general meltdown of the Internet, it’s currently down. Via comments here:

January 20, 2009
Bush Mocked As He Arrives on Inauguration Dais
@ 11:52 am by Hill Staff

Continue reading This Hill story’s getting hit by Drudge…