Tag: California

Barbara Boxer (D, CA) to get primary challenger: Mickey Kaus.

Seriously.

Pioneering political blogger Mickey Kaus took out papers filed to run for U.S. Senate in California, he told LA Weekly. The Venice resident said he’ll run this year against Barbara Boxer for her seat. He said he took out filed papers at with the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters, although a spokeswoman there could not yet confirm the filing.

The Democrat has been centrist and even conservative on some of the issues on which Boxer has taken a more left-leaning stand, including immigration: He does not favor amnesty and favors a more restrictive national policy.

Mickey’s even admitted to it on his site, which would explain why it’s not been updated for a week otherwise.  For obvious reasons, I’m not endorsing him – a hypothetical Senator Kaus would caucus with the Democrats, which breaks the first rule of my endorsement criteria – but if you’re a Democrat who is tired of a liberal idiot* or idiots representing you, well, do something useful about it.  Nobody cares if you’re just going to be mortified.

Moe Lane Continue reading Barbara Boxer (D, CA) to get primary challenger: Mickey Kaus.

Hey, Pete Stark’s (D) under an ethics investigation!

You know Pete: he’s that crazy Democrat who goes around threatening to throw journalists out the window when he doesn’t like the questions.  He’s also that crazy Democrat who’ll take over for Charlie Rangel at Ways & Means if Rangel ever has to answer for his ethics violations, which is probably not the least reason why the Democrats haven’t thrown Rangel out of a metaphorical window of his own.  Anyway, Pete’s getting investigated:  the Washington Times is guessing tax evasion, real estate where-does-he-actually-live edition.

Yes.  You’re all shocked that a Democratic politician wasn’t paying his taxes.

This got reported back in March, mind you.  And they’re getting around to checking it out now.  But no doubt the federal government will be much quicker about having that suspicious dark spot in your next X-ray properly assessed.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

:raised eyebrow: Since when is raising a kid not ‘work?’

Ah, right: Joy Behar. Like it’s my fault that I married a roboticist.  Ach, well, what people do for ratings.

(Via Instapundit)

Moe Lane

PS: It’s Paul Rodriquez who was the comedian trying to get them to turn the damn taps back on in California, not George Lopez.  I mention this so that various people in comments sections stop thinking daggers at the former; yes, yes, I’m a mad optimist.

California taxpayer raid: “Think of it as a forced, interest-free loan…”

(h/t: Instapundit) California’s come up with another way to ensure that when the state finally crashes, it’s really going to crash:

California to withhold a bigger chunk of paychecks
The amount goes up 10% on Sunday as Sacramento borrows from taxpayers. Technically, it’s not an income tax increase: You’ll get the money back eventually.

Reporting from Los Angeles and Sacramento – Starting Sunday, cash-strapped California will dig deeper into the pocketbooks of wage earners — holding back 10% more than it already does in state income taxes just as the biggest shopping season of the year kicks into gear.

Technically, it’s not a tax increase, even though it may feel like one when your next paycheck arrives. As part of a bundle of budget patches adopted in the summer, the state is taking more money now in withholding, even though workers’ annual tax bills won’t change.

If I ever become a convert to Objectivism, it’ll be because of California: that state seems determined to ignore the elementary fiscal rule of Don’t spend money that you don’t have, you idjits. I realize that this sounds like a simplistic solution to what is a very complicated problem, but so is Robbing Peter to Pay Paul. Except that in this case it’s more like Robbing Peter and Paul while telling them that they’ll be getting the money back.  Unless they need to make the robbing permanent.  Which they probably will, because they got away with it in the first place, right?

I admit that this is harder to memorize.

Moe Lane

PS: Another bit of elementary fiscal wisdom: It is absurd to think that you can transfer 1.8 billion in funding from things that generate wealth (business) to things that consume it (government) without it having an effect on the larger economy. I mention this because said wisdom has unaccountably eluded everybody defending this policy as being not being all that bad.

PPS: Hey, do you know that a top Californian state official – Lt. Governor John Garamendi – is actually within the reach of at least one CD’s worth of voters?  He is, he is.  If you live in CA-10, by all means: show your disapproval by voting for David Harmer on Tuesday.

Crossposted to RedState.

There’s dumb, and then there’s DUMB.

And if a further level of dumb is needed, there’s John Garamendi (D) levels of dumb.  In order of dumbness:

  • Dumb. Not doing elementary fact-checking before you send out a campaign flyer that mixes up your opponent with a guy from another state. As Jim Geraghty put it: “Same name, different guy.”
  • Dumber. Not being mature enough to apologize when your smear is caught and commented on.  Sneering at your opponent as being out of touch is not very smart when you can’t even get elementary details about his career right. Also via Jim Geraghty.
  • John Garamendi (D) Dumb. Giving sarcastic, mocking bloggers an opportunity to publish this truly unfortunate video again:

It seems that the Democrats are fairly determined to make a race of CA-10. Give David Harmer some help, will you? I promise that the link goes to the right guy…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Two Americas Watch: Antonio Villaraigosa (D).

(Via Deceiver) There’s the America where Los Angeles is in the middle of an ongoing drought, and is thus subject to strong water restrictions – which are being pushed by its mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa (D). Then there’s the America where the mayor of Los Angeles was – illegally – watering his own lawn while everybody else’s was dying. And how does he explain this discrepancy? Heavy sleeping.

No, really, that’s what Villaraigosa said.

“The sprinklers are so loud in your back yard, you can hear them from the street. How could you or your household staff not have heard them?” [NBC4’s Joel] Grover said.

“I sleep very heavily and I couldn’t hear it,” said Villaraigosa, who noted that overall water use at his home has decreased.

Continue reading Two Americas Watch: Antonio Villaraigosa (D).

Mike Berryhill challenging Dennis Cardoza (D, CA-18).

[UPDATE] Mike’s campaign site is now up; contribute here.

CA-18 is a D+4 district that voted for Bush in 2004; incumbent Cardoza ran unopposed in 2008.  Of course, that was before unemployment in Cardoza’s district hit double digits*, and why Cardoza’s yelling for help from the federal government, while treating Speaker Pelosi like the radioactive career-killer that she is.  Mind you, Cardoza’s also ducking those inconveniently public town halls in favor of nice, controllable mass phone calls; which tells you everything that you need to know about his interest in his consituency.  Or his personal moral courage.

So he’s getting a challenge: Mike Berryhill, who’s a local irrigation district director – and apparently annoyed. Continue reading Mike Berryhill challenging Dennis Cardoza (D, CA-18).

Gresham’s Law II: THE REVENGE.

The first line says it all:

“Small businesses that received $682 million in IOUs from the state say California expects them to pay taxes on the worthless scraps of paper, but refuses to accept its own IOUs to pay debts or taxes.”

So a bunch of them are suing the state government.  The lead plaintiff in this one is a shirt manufacturer who got paid scrip for a product she provided… which she can’t use to pay the taxes on the sale. Which is interesting, because something like this happened to me in a dream, once.  And then the burning llama in an asbestos night-shirt surfaced from the pool of liquid nitrogen and told me that I had been chosen to lead the forces of Goodness against Kenny G*.

In other words, put me down for finding this ‘breathtakingly stupid,’ too.

Moe Lane

*No, I don’t have anything in particular against Kenny G.  Somebody has to do it, and at least he doesn’t destroy hotel rooms while on tour.

Crossposted to RedState.