Month: January 2012

Gov. Jerry Brown’s (D, CA) new budget: more spending and higher taxes!

To summarize: $92.6 billion in spending (7% increase over last year’s); $9.2 billion deficit over eighteen months (half in the first six months, the other half in the next twelve).  Brown is requesting $7 billion in new taxes, mostly from raising the sales tax again (to 7.75%) but with a faux-populist-friendly soak-the-rich* (actually, soak-the-small-business-owner) increase to 10.3%.  Or the state can ‘cut’ an additional $4.8 billion in educational aid (he’s already planning to reduce poverty assistance by $4.2 billion): the most increased spending appears to be in tax relief/local government**… and education.  In other words, that cut would actually be mostly in a projected increase in education spending, which means that it’s not really a cut at all.

Or, to summarize the summary: Brown’s bailing out the municipalities; and he’s trying to blackmail the Californian populace into a tax hike to pay for it by threatening to wipe out an increase in K-12 education funds if they don’t vote said hike in.  See how that works? Increase spending in a line-item; then call the threat to remove that increase a ‘budget cut’ and use it to justify a ‘temporary’ tax.  It’s a great scam; or, rather, it was a great scam twenty years ago, when there was more give in the system. Today, it’s just kind of alarming. Continue reading Gov. Jerry Brown’s (D, CA) new budget: more spending and higher taxes!

Tweet of the Day, Oh Dear Edition (Al Smith, sorta kinda, and by the way).

From @LizMair:

For that matter: Al Smith’s paternal grandfather was an Italian: presumably he took the opportunity of Ellis Island to Anglicize his name from ‘Ferrara’ to ‘Smith,’ in much the same way that my great-grandfather thought that ‘Lane’ would be easier on American ears than “O’Laighin*.”

Moe Lane Continue reading Tweet of the Day, Oh Dear Edition (Al Smith, sorta kinda, and by the way).

Note to spammers trying to sell me D*I*A*B*L*O 3 G*O*L*D.

I don’t specifically mind that you’re trying to hide your spam through the tactic of reprinting political commentary.  I don’t specifically mind that you’ve mostly decided to make it look like Lefty political commentary, presumably on the assumption that that way people might not twig to the spelling, grammatical, and coherence errors right away.  I don’t even specifically mind that you’re mining Occupier posts, presumably on the assumption that etc, etc, etc.  But comparing the Palestinian situation to the Holocaust, with Israelis playing the part of the Nazis?  Yeah, that I specifically mind.  That kind of talk is just trash tactics and trash behavior that’s done by trash, and I’d think that even an email spammer would have his or her pride.

Shame on you people.

Seems to be my day for commenting on other RSers.

I can’t really add anything to this Leon Wolf post slamming the racist… person who made a vicious pro-Ron Paul video attacking Jon Huntsman for adopting a Chinese girl, except for this: whoever made that video is undoubtedly not going to be voting for the Republican candidate in 2012, AND THAT’S JUST FINE WITH ME.

Sheesh.

Moe Lane

PS: Note that this observation works whether or not the video was made by a Ron Paul supporter, or else a Democrat; the important thing to note is that it wasn’t made by a conservative or Republican.

#rsrh Interesting: nothing from the Perry campaign since Tuesday.

At least, I haven’t gotten anything from them; and they’re one of the campaigns whose mailing lists I am on.  Normally, that would be considered a bad sign; but, keeping my RS colleague and friend* Erick Erickson’s recent post in mind, this could end up being a pretty good one. I’ve got less against Team Perry’s media contingent then some, but it’s fairly clear by now that a shakeup is needed.

Moe Lane Continue reading #rsrh Interesting: nothing from the Perry campaign since Tuesday.

#rsrh Obama’s premature politicization of NLRB appointments.

A somewhat entertaining wrinkle in those somewhat hasty and fumbling recess appointments to the National Labor [Relations] Board that Obama brought off today: it turns out that the three picks were only submitted to the Senate on December 15th.  They have not been in point of fact filibustered; the question hasn’t even arisen yet, given that it’s been all of nineteen days since the names were submitted and a huge chunk of that time was the Christmas/New Year’s break.  I’ve heard of… anticipation, but that’s just absurd.  If you’re going to try to paint the opposition party as obstructionists, common courtesy dictates that you at least give the opposition party a chance to actually obstruct.  Otherwise you’re just being silly.

One hopes that the President is not going to make a habit of this sort of thing…

Moe Lane

PS: What’s that I hear? “The GOP was going to obstruct anyway, so it’s perfectly all right for the President to get it over with quickly!” …Do tell.  And God, but do I feel sorry for the wife of any man making that particular argument…

#rsrh Well, I WAS going to blog on what I was planning to do…

…in a post-Perry primary environment, but it turns out that this will not be necessary. Governor Perry’s staying in:

“I talked to my campaign staff, senior guys, you know, (Joe) Allbaugh, (Ray) Sullivan,” Perry said. “This wasn’t a hard decision. This was one of those where you take a look, you didn’t do as well in Iowa as you wanted to, but this is a quirky place and a quirky process to say the least. We’re going to go into places where they have actual primaries and there are going to be real Republicans voting. I’m excited about getting out with real Republicans and laying out – not that there aren’t real Republicans here in Iowa, but the fact is that it was a pretty loosey-goosey process and you had a lot of people who were there that admitted they were Democrats, voting in the caucuses last night.”

Good.  I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the idea of having to settle for another candidate at this point.

Moe Lane

#rsrh A heartwarming exercise in applied civil rights in Oklahoma.

Saw this via @SissyWillis: apparently, a teen mom (and widow) in Oklahoma had two guys breaking in her house (complete with hunting knife) where she and her three month old baby were; and when she called 911 to ask whether it was all right to shoot the intruders, 911 told her… Continue reading #rsrh A heartwarming exercise in applied civil rights in Oklahoma.

#rsrh Picture of the Day, This Is a Man-Killing Job Edition.

No snark: it is a man-killing job, Democratic or Republican.  My rule of thumb is that being President effectively ages you 2.5 years for every one, and with Obama it’s showing.

Not to give the President any unsolicited advice or anything, but: more basketball, less golf.  Seriously.  George W. Bush did a lot of running to keep the stress down and the heart-rate up; I don’t know if basketball is worse, better, or as good as an alternative to running, but it’s got to be better cardio than golf is.

Moe Lane