California's budget dilemma

The State of California's controller, John Chiang, recently visited the Westlake Village area and gave a talk about the budget problems he faces and the future prospects for the state.  According to the local paper, Acorn, the controller talked about how the real estate crash of '07 caused a huge shortfall in revenues and an inability to meet the obligations of the state, predicting "It's going to be a rough couple of years", before things improve.  Chiang went on to discuss how the state's future depends on the skill set of the population (education system), financial capital and infrastructure, are the most important elements of the California economy and that all three of these components are now severely weakened by this crises.  He also talks about how Californians were living beyond their means before the crises and how the state will be in even greater trouble if commodity prices increase and consumer spending decreases.  Okay, all this analysis is interesting, at least to him, but what is the state doing to bring expenditures in line with revenues and what is it doing to address the outrageous stranglehold the public service unions exert over the economy, a condition that has been a growing issue for decades?  Not a peep!  Chiang offers no advice on getting the unions under control nor how to address the pension fund shortfall that represents a claim on taxpayers that for the present, at least, dwarfs everything else he talked about.  This City Journal piece suggests some of the issues Chiang and his cohorts should be talking about because they are immediate and if they don't get addressed there will be no money for any of the big picture issues he spent his time addressing.  What we're seeing here is a public official, in office as a choice of a governor who in turn is in office as a result of union financing and support.  Think these guys are going to get a handle on the really big problem?  It's pretty clear from Chiang's presentation they would rather talk about macro economic issues than address the union issue.

ADDED: This City Journal piece sets the record right with respect to exactly how much the 1.85 million state and local government employees are costing the rest of us.  There is no way this huge imbalance can or will continue.

Islam vs the west

This interview is essential viewing to understand where the two competing world civilizations are at present.  The two authorities here are highly regarded scholars in their firlds.

Elizabeth Drew of NYT Book Review provides the liberal view

Elizabeth Drew is obviously a garden variety liberal who shows no evidence of having read anything about past recessions and depressions and who is clearly unaware of George Santayana's classic admonition: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it".  The past was Herbert Hoover's reaction to the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 to dramatically increase taxes and create government spending programs willy nilly. Things got much worse over the next three years and in 1932 FDR ran against these profligate big spending programs, won big over the incumbent Hoover and proceeded in the next several years to double down on all Hoover's misguided tax and spending programs. Only the onset of the second world war in 1941, twelve years after the Great Depression began,  put Americans back to work thus ending the longest and deepest economic correction in our country's history.  In short the high tax big spending government programs during the '30's did little other than to prolong a recovery and make a bad economy worse.  So here we have the example of another "pundit" essentially agreeing with Obama's position on raising taxes and continuing big spending government programs that history showed us did not work.  And so it goes in liberal circles today.

The common sense Senator -- Jeff Sessions

Jeff Sessions made the following comments on the floor of the US Senate yesterday:  we would do well to remember them when the dust settles on this disgraceful budget debate charade/fiasco:

First, I would like to address the myth that the president has a $4 trillion deficit-reduction plan. The only plan the White House has ever put on paper is his February budget, which doubles our national debt.

The president has never put a single spending cut plan on paper and he has no proposal to slash the deficit. If he does, it’s a closely guarded secret. And if such a secret plan does exist it should be made public this very afternoon. I’d like to see it. I’m sure millions of Americans feel the same.

We also have no debt plan from Senate Democrats. In fact, they haven’t even passed a budget in 813 days.

As of now, there is only one debt limit plan on paper. Only one plan available for public scrutiny and review. That’s the plan we are debating today: cut, cap, and balance. It cuts spending immediately, it caps it so it doesn’t go up, and it requires the passage of a balanced budget amendment to ensure Washington ends the deficit spending once and for all. The American people do not trust Washington to pass some grand budget deal with tax hikes that never go away and spending cuts that never materialize. …

Another myth I’d like to address is the idea that our current budget crisis is the result of two wars and a tax cut. Let’s consider that claim. The total cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, over the entire last decade, is $1.3 trillion. Again, that’s over the last decade. This year alone the deficit is expected to be $1.4 trillion dollars. War costs represent only 4 percent of total outlays over the last ten years. The total amount of money spent since the president took office is $8.5 trillion dollars. By the end of his first three years in office we will have added $5 trillion to our gross federal debt. We are borrowing almost half of what we’re spending every single day. In the last two years, non-defense discretionary spending has soared 24 percent. The stimulus package alone—enacted into law in a single day in 2009—cost more than the entire war in Iraq. Annual spending when President Bush took office was less than $2 trillion. Today, it’s almost $4 trillion. It will be almost $6 trillion by the end of the decade.

There is only one honest answer to the question over why our debt is rising so fast: out-of-control domestic spending.

Another myth that’s circulating which I’d like to address concerns the budget summary from the Gang of Six. The authors of the summary claim that their approach would reduce the deficit by $3.7 trillion. But my staff on the Budget Committee can only find $1.2 trillion in reduced spending, along with a tax increase of $1 trillion. Where does the other $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction come from? Chairman Conrad, one of the members of the Gang of Six, even says the outline has a $1.5 trillion tax cut. But this is compared against a baseline that assumes a $3.5 trillion tax increase. It’s just an accounting gimmick. The real cost of the tax changes could be an increase as large as $2 trillion.

This is why we need more than a handout—we need legislative text.

The last myth that I’d like to address is perhaps the most important of all. This is the myth that we only need about $2 trillion in spending cuts over the next ten years.

Democrats have said—although no plan has ever been made public—that they could get behind a budget deal that reduces the deficit $4 trillion over the next ten years, half of it comprised of spending cuts. I’m skeptical that even this minimal level of spending cuts would occur. But even if it did, it’s not even close to what is needed to ultimately balance our budget. We are projected to spend $46 trillion over the next ten years. A $2 trillion cut is only about a four percent reduction in spending that is set to increase almost sixty percent.

Affirmative action revisited by J.R. Dunn of American Thinker

Helen Sargent, a southerner by birth and upbringing, has commented numerous times after visiting family and friends in Alabama, about how well the blacks are doing economically, and how comfortable race relations were in her old home town of Mobile.  This fact she attributes to the history in the south in which blacks and whites have shared space together for a long time, admittedly much of that time in a repressive, one could say evil relationship, and as such learned about each other and in many ways oddly came to be comfortable with one another.  For several decades now blacks have been returning to the south from the economically depressed mid-west and elsewhere, and seemingly are integrating comfortably in the new/old culture there.  Elsewhere in the country race relations are quite tense and can be said to have worsened under the Obama leadership.  J.R. Dunn here lays much of the blame for this condition on the polarizing effect of Obama playing the race card whenever it could possibly benefit him, and on the highly toxic effects of Affirmative Action and the inherent divisiveness of the policies, e.g. set asides, quotas, etc., of this political construct.  Objectively it is hard to see where Affirmative Action has had any positive effect.  What it seems to do quite effectively is pit race against race causing strained relations all around.  What's more the policy is the antithesis of the American can-do spirit of individualism in which each person is ultimately responsible for making his own way in life.  Liberals may agree with this thought but argue that blacks need a leg up to catch up as a result of the debilitating effects of centuries of slavery.  The downside of this latter argument is the dependency culture effect of Affirmative Action that liberals cultivate and nurture for political purposes.  Many thinking blacks agree that this construct has been counterproductive.

Bias in the media

This may be one of those seminal news series that once and for all helps people understand the hapless thought process of the liberal mind.  Once again Powerline has allowed this story to see the light of day and become a part of the record.  Were it not for the internet and the few conservative news outlets like Fox, we would never have heard a thing about this fascinating story.  The series to date are here, here, here, here, and here.

Istanbul and earthquakes

Claire Berlinski, a free-lance writer who contributes to many media outlets and who lives in Istanbul, writes here about the threat of earthquakes to metropolitan areas, specifically Istanbul.  When one of these monster quakes happens in a vulnerable city that is unprepared, such as Istanbul, Claire predicts there could be millions of casualties.  As she points out, Istanbul is no more prepared for a monster quake than Port-au-prince, Haitti, and there are 30 to 40 times as many people living there.  It is her contention that the corruption of the political parties, all of whom are in cahoots with the construction industry, is the root cause of the lack of preparation.  This could be ugly.