Tag: john garamendi

American Action Network’s targeted advertising and the redistricting wars.

It’s interesting.  If you look at these two ads from American Action Network – one for California, and one for New York – solely from the perspective of a national observer, it’s a headscratcher as to why a conservative-leaning group is targeting six Democratic Members of Congress (Tim Bishop, Lois Capps, John Garamendi, Jerry McNerney, Bill Owens, & Louise Slaughter) in two Blue States; particularly since none of the individuals involved are freshmen.  And yet AAN did not merely do the ads; they’re going to be backing them with targeted online advertising.  And why are they doing this?

Because California and New York both had… unexpected… results in the redistricting wars.  Ones that actually ended up not hurting Republicans as much as expected. Continue reading American Action Network’s targeted advertising and the redistricting wars.

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.