Sorry Boehner, You're Wrong

Boehner: 'Spending barrage' starting

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told conservatives Friday that a "spending barrage" from President Barack Obama is the first step toward an American brand of socialism.

"First it was the stimulus, then the omnibus and now the budget," Boehner said during a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference. "It's all a down payment on a new American socialist experiment."

"The spending barrage is just beginning," he added.

Boehner harshly criticized the president's recently unveiled budget as a "job killer, plain and simple."

"American jobs are under threat," he said.

The down payment on the new American socialist experiment was made by George W. Bush with No Child Left Behind, Homeland Security, and the Medicare prescription drug bill. Forty percent of earmarks in the latest Democrat spending bill are Republican earmarks. This party is finished, or at least, I'm finished with them, unless some new blood gets in there. There are almost no elected officials with any principle. I know of only a handful, such as Senators Inhofe, Coburn and Shelby, and Congressmen Pence, McCotter, and of course Ron Paul. Outside of Thaddeus McCotter and Ron Paul, I'm not sure than any Republican even understands the economy. They want the same Keynesian BS, only in the form of tax cuts instead of spending.

Until someone proposes the more than $1 trillion in spending cuts necessary to balance the budget (about 30% of current Federal spending), then there's nothing to discuss. We'll take it to the streets.

Would you join me for afternoon tea? Delightful!

Why reduce the deduction for charitable contributions?

The nefarious might claim Obama really wants to weaken the private sector with this law. Since even Democrats oppose it, however, my guess is that this is a red flag for the bulls. Conservatives will stupidly focus on some idiotic clause that means nothing in comparison to the overall bill, Democrats will also avert their focus from the rest of the bill, and then Obama gets his big victory and gives conservatives a bone on charitable contributions.

The Bubba Effect

This is both hilarious and a little frightening at the same time. It's even funnier/scarier if you connect Bubba with Deliverance.

Donald Sensing has a plan...and I like it

Repeal the 16th and 17th Amendments.

Both were "Progressive" ideas, and we see how well progressivism turned out. This European disease should be torn out by the roots and sent back where it belongs.

They Taxed Paradise and Made it an Empty Lot

They taxed paradise and made it an empty lot
With a drab motel, no jobs, and no wi-fi spots
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got till it's gone
They taxed paradise and made it an empty lot

They took all the jobs, and put em in a bureaucracy
And they taxed the people an arm and a leg to get them
No, no, no, don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got till it's gone
They taxed paradise, and made it an empty lot

Hey farmer, banker get your hands away from me,
I don't care about a tough economy,
Leave me the freedom to do as I - please
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got till it's gone
They taxed paradise and made it an empty lot
Hey now, they've taxed paradise to make it an empty lot
Why not?

Listen, late last night, I heard the newsman say,
That a low tax country took my job away
Now don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got till it's gone
They taxed paradise and made it an empty lot
Hey now now, don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got till it's gone
They taxed paradise to made it an empty lot
Why not, they taxed paradise
They made it an empty lot
Hey hey hey, taxed paradise and made it an empty lot

I don't wanna give it
Why you tax it
Why you wanna spendin it all away
Hey, hey, hey
Now you wanna tax it
I don’t wanna give it
Cuz you're spending it all away, no no

I don't wanna give it
Why you wanna tax it
Why you wanna spend it all away
Cuz you're tax it all spendin it all away yeah yeah
Cuz You're spendin it all away hey, hey, hey

Hey, taxed paradise, to make it an empty lot
la,la, la, la, la, la, la ,la ,la ,la ,la
Taxed paradise, and made it an empty lot

Are you laughing?

I'm laughing. This is funny stuff.

House Democrats unveiled a $410 billion spending bill on Monday to keep the government running through the end of the fiscal year, setting up the second political struggle over federal funds in less than a month with Republicans.

The measure includes thousands of earmarks, the pet projects favored by lawmakers but often criticized by the public in opinion polls. There was no official total of the bill's earmarks, which accounted for at least $3.8 billion.

The legislation, which includes an increase of roughly 8 percent over spending in the last fiscal year, is expected to clear the House later in the week.

Democrats defended the spending increases, saying they were needed to make up for cuts enacted in recent years or proposed a year ago by then-President George W. Bush in health, education, energy and other programs.

Democrats always want higher spending. If a Republican President spent money faster than a crack-addicted compulsive gambler (George Bush), Democrats would complain it wasn't enough. Don't worry though, by the end of Obama's term, he will have cut the deficit in half...to an amount higher than any deficit under George Bush. At the current rate, this year's deficit will probably exceed $2 trillion, and may come close to equaling 50% of Bush's deficits over 8 years. Democrats are using the same strategy as Citigroup, AIG, Bank of America, GE, subprime home buyers, Bear Stearns, and Lehman Brothers. Borrow short-term to the hilt, and hope the long-term investments pay off.

Rick Santelli made a funny when he attacked the idea of a government spending multiplier and asked why we don't spend $1 trillion every day if it creates $1.5 trillion in GDP. Well, the Democrats are trying. The only flaw in their plan is that there's no money—the government is literally broke. It's like small children thinking monopoly money is real. But too many Americans are essentially little children. They stomp their feet when things go bad and say, "We have to do something! I have a boo boo!" Prop up my home, save my farm/bank/car company, pay for my healthcare, education, job training. The public simply has no concept of budgeting, interest rates, money supply, currency rates and how these can combine to totally annihilate Federal spending.

Democrats are out of cash, but they want to keep playing at the poker table. They are now putting up Medicare and Social Security to play another hand. That's how big the stakes are with these spendaholics in charge. Does the average American realize the huge gamble "we" are taking? If it fails, instead of Medicare, you will receive a bill for interest. Either you will literally be paying high taxes for interest on the debt, or the government will have inflated it away and you will have to pay 12% interest to get a mortgage, or your Social Security check will grow at the 5% government CPI, but your actual costs will be up 15%.

The kids are in charge. Sit back, grab a beer, and enjoy. It won't be long before they piss their pants, break some furniture, vomit on the floor and maybe even burn the house down. It's America's Funniest Home Videos, all day, everyday.

Either that or go insane.

The Bubama Plague

It seems the hard-working members of the right and left are in total agreement: stop giving money to failed business and irresponsible borrowers.

Among them: Lynn Powers, 39, a Bethesda, Md., resident who describes herself as a “liberal Democrat” who has been hardworking, prudent and responsible — and now feels “like a fool.”

“We were in the market,” she says. “We put out eight bids and got outbid every time. It was very upsetting for us. I want to see some accountability and responsibility across the board. The only way for me to have an affordable home, and I’m not looking for a McMansion at all, is if we let the chips fall, in a sense. This is still the bubble — the prices have to come down. You can’t just subsidize some of the people. I don’t know how you deleverage. It is going to be painful, but this is also hurting the people who behaved responsibly.”

What does she mean by “responsibly”?

“People who didn’t overbuy. Who stuck to their guns. Who read their contracts,” she says. She and her husband wound up buying a 600-square-foot studio and moved to a rental when they had their daughter, now 18 months old.

“My husband and I paid for our cars in cash,” she says. “We have no credit card debt. We have no student loans. I don’t buy Starbucks, but that’s because they’re non-fair trade, nonenvironmental.”

When they tried to buy a house, she said, “We just felt outgunned.” And now, she says, “I feel very outgunned as a citizen.”

Does she know she's channeling the "leave it alone liquidationists", the enemies of Hoover, FDR, Bush and Obama? She's an Austrian and she doesn't even know it.

Another Maryland resident concurs: “I am an Obama supporter, campaigned for him, baked cookies for him; my husband and I are Democrats all the way, but this is the issue that gets our goat.”

Echoing Santelli’s complaint, a Silver Spring, Md., mom who did not want her name used adds: “I’m not sure why we should work and pay for someone else to have a granite countertop or an extra bathroom.”

When asked about people who hadn’t overreached but had lost their down-­payment money when the value of their homes had dropped, she replies, “We put money in a 401(k), and we lost that money, and no one is going to give it back.”

So much for a level playing field, opportunity for all, a free and fair economy. Instead we get unfree, unfair, and debt and taxes to pay for other peoples' stupidity, hubris, and greed.

Bush/Obama, the Bubama Plague. Hopefully it won't destroy one-third of our GDP. There are, of course, plenty of vaccines.

Leftism: A Videologue

Enjoy!

The Renters are angry

If you rent, you are part of 32% of the American public. Why should you have to pay for people who bought overpriced homes? I don't know.

Angry Renter

Boston ReTea Party

There will be a Re Tea Party in Boston.

WHEN: Saturday, July 4, 2009

WHERE: Griffins Wharf | Boston, MA

Rick Santelli’s Chicago Tea Party

So many things to protest these days. Maybe toss an Amtrack car in the harbor? How about some government cheese? Mohair? Social Security card?

We're going to have a Tea Party!!!

A lot of folks might not be able to go to Chicago.

Massachusetts can kick it old school.

And let's get some tar and feathers.

Seeds of Revolution

Rick Santelli needs a pitchfork.

President of the EU Slams the EU

Klaus is known for deep skepticism of the EU and has refused to fly the EU flag over his official seat in Prague during the Czech presidency, saying the country is not an EU province.

He said current EU practices smacked of communist times when the Soviet Union controlled much of eastern Europe, including the Czech Republic and when dissent or even discussions were not tolerated.

"Not so long ago, in our part of Europe we lived in a political system that permitted no alternatives and therefore also no parliamentary opposition," said Klaus. "We learned the bitter lesson that with no opposition, there is no freedom."

He said the 27-nation bloc should concentrate on offering prosperity to Europeans, rather than closer political union, and scrap a stalled EU reform treaty that Irish voters have already rejected.

Klaus said that questioning deeper integration has become an "uncriticizable assumption that there is only one possible and correct future of the European integration."

Czech president compares EU to Soviet Union

New Link

In the News section, Pension Tsunami.

Covering the yet to be mainstream story of the underfunded pension problem.

I ♥Derb

Derb takes a swing at low-brow conservatism and connects.

With reasons for gratitude duly noted, are there some downsides to conservative talk radio? Taking the conservative project as a whole—limited government,fiscal prudence, equality under law, personal liberty, patriotism, realism
abroad—has talk radio helped or hurt? All those good things are plainly off the
table for the next four years at least, a prospect that conservatives can only
view with anguish. Did the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Savages, and Ingrahams lead
us to this sorry state of affairs?

They surely did. At the very least, by yoking themselves to the clueless George W. Bush and his free-spending administration, they helped create the great debt bubble that has now burst so spectacularly. The big names, too, were all uncritical of the decade-long (at least) efforts to “build democracy” in noaccount nations with politically primitive populations. Sean Hannity called the Iraq War a “massive success,” and in January 2008 deemed the U.S. economy “phenomenal.”

Much more at the link, but sign up may be required. I would love to hear Derb discuss this article with Limbaugh because I think it would not be acrimonious and would air a lot of dirty laundry that's piled up after 8 years of George W. Bush. In Limbaugh's defense, when he gets serious about an issue he's very close to what I think Derb means when he talks about middle-brow conservatism.

Detroitification: State Tax Revenues Imploding

Good thing Massachusetts voters didn't eliminate the income tax. Otherwise, they would have forced the state to immediately cut spending and prepare for a decline in revenues. Instead, they're still spending to the hilt while the economy implodes around them. Long story short: state spending is going to cliff dive or they're going to literally tax the suckers workers back to the stone age.

Mish has it covered:

California is, like many states simply spending beyond its means. Promises have been made than cannot be kept. Raising taxes is not the answer in California or anywhere else.

Eventually someone will give in. Will it be the one needed Republican or a group of Democrats who agree to cut more spending?

Either way the point is moot except for an initial cheer of exhaustion. Falling sales tax revenue and falling property tax collections ensures another budget crisis is coming up in a few more months, not just in California but 46 states.

Think Obama's stimulus plan will counteract this on top of everything else that is going wrong? Think again.

Here is the very important point to understand, in light of Guvnah Deval's plans to close the budget shortfall. (And be clear that this is to close the shortfall that appeared around October-December. The even bigger hole that exists today hasn't even been publicized yet.) If the state's GDP declines and undergoes a permanent downshift, then maintaining government spending is the same as a massive increase in taxes and spending. The size of government relative to GDP will grow massively this year and in future, and may finally break the back of companies and industries that struggled to stay in the area. Considering the tax breaks for biotech and other favored industries, unless you are a high-wage employee in this field or others such as law, you'd best consider selling your home and finding a nice place down South before rising property taxes or job loss force you into foreclosure.

Prepare for Detriotification.

Can we import Yan Yiming?

I love this:

A Shanghai lawyer made a formal request with the Ministry of Finance this week to make public the detailed expenditure of the country's four-trillion-yuan fiscal stimulus package (585.5 billion U.S. dollars).

Yan Yiming, a lawyer specializing in securities case and owning a law firm named after himself, said he was dissatisfied with the ministry's previous response to his request which said it was improper to have the information released.

The current formal request made this week, an 'administrative reconsideration', must get a reply from the ministry within 15 days, according to the Chinese law.

Yan submitted his previous request to the Ministry of Finance (MOF) and the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top economic planner, on Jan. 7. According to Yan, The MOF reply came less than two weeks later but the NDRC remained silent.

The Ministry of Finance said in a written reply that the plan details should be released after it was approved by the National People's Congress, China's top legislature.

"There is no state secret in the stimulus plan, then why not make it public for better supervision?" Yan said.

Here's a Bloomberg interview with Yan Yiming.


Recall that Bloomberg sued the Federal Reserve over its secretive lending practices and they were rebuffed.

Oklahoma May Ask For Its Rights Back

Check this out:

A Joint Resolution claiming sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over certain powers; serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates; providing that certain federal legislation be prohibited or repealed; and directing distribution.

Tragedy of the Commons: Education

Reading the latest post from Mencius Moldbug, I made a connection between yesterday's post on education and his use of the Tragedy of the Commons.

The example used in Moldbug's post is the fisheries. When one person/company/organization/caretaker owns the fish, they will protect them and only extract the "interest". They will maintain a relatively stable population of fish and only take the excess. When many fisherman can take the fish, their incentive is to grab as many fish as possible, otherwise someone else will, and overfishing leads to a decline of the fisheries. Moldbug then goes on to discuss this in the context of fractured authority.

This go me thinking about the education system in America. What is the nation's greatest resource? It is the students. If all power were given to the student or their parent (guardian), their incentive would be to maximize their return. They have full ownership of the thing of value in the system—themselves. (State spending is dependent on the student. No students, no schools, no spending.) But instead of giving the student absolute authority over the spending of education money, it is fractured throughout federal government, state government, local government, teachers' unions and school boards. Thus, the one person who has the most interest in maximizing their educational return, the student, in fact has almost all authority and capital stripped from them by various parties with their own personal interests and goals, which may or may not coincide with the interests of the student.

The federal bureaucrat's mandate is to ensure education money is spent effectively. No Child Left Behind includes tests to measure student performance. They do not care if the tests really work, their job is to administer tests, and they do so. Massachusetts state government administers MCAS for the same reason, with the same effects.

Local government's strip the public of capital and redirect it in the interests of the majority of the public, which will never be closely aligned with the interests of students.

School boards are there to make sure money is spent properly and to hold the educators accountable. I don't need to go far to find an example of Creation/evolution battles to show that they are not acting in the interest of the individual students. These are the battles that make headlines, consider how many pass without interest to the public, such as battles over which foreign languages to teach, or what math courses to offer.

Finally, there are the teacher's unions. Their interest is to maximize the flow of income into the school system, and then maximize the flow of said income into their members' pockets. They've done a masterful job of convincing the public that our biggest problem is underpaid teachers.

Consider the converse. Imagine a system where the student can choose among public schools. (School choice) Here, the student can outmaneuver the school boards and perhaps find a school more in tune with his educational needs.

Imagine a system where the student directs the capital. (Vouchers) The student can outmaneuver the school board, and to some extent the teachers' unions. With fractured control over spending, the union could no longer control the flow of funds at the school level (which now depends on how many students choose to attend). They can still lobby for more funding at the government level, and there's still the ultimate control of government on how the money is spent.

Now imagine a system where the student owns the capital. In this system, there is no authority higher than the student. Government cannot impose testing on the student (though they may try, "in the public interest") because the student does not use public funds. The student finally has the ability to maximize his return on investment (ROI). The student has the choice to attend a school, or to maintain total educational freedom in the environment of a home school. (And in light of European systems with educational choice, homeschooling would meet very strong competition from educations with an economic incentive to deliver superior returns.) With local and state government out of the picture, the teachers and boards of private schools only have control to the extent that they show a superior ability to maximize the student's ROI.

All the failures and reforms of public education fail and continue to fail because they are trying to fix a system flawed from the start. To the extent that school choice and vouchers show improvements, it is because they are closer to the ideal system of total student control. Efforts at school choice and vouchers, however, are wasted efforts. Promoting a less-bad system is to promote a bad system. If all the school choice, voucher, and home school supporters combined their efforts and promoted the best system, we would have the chance to accomplish something good.

About those foreign workers...

Massachusetts has to rely on foreign workers to replace the Exodus of young people from the state. I had this to say about it:

Massachusetts needs to rely on international immigration policies...which will turn decidedly against immigration during a massive economic downturn. On top of which, the Congress and President are sticking xenophobic "Buy American" clauses into their legislation, at the very least fueling nativist sentiment.

More evidence comes from Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa.

Microsoft's plans to lay off 5,000 workers have ruffled the feathers of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a long-time critic of the U.S. H-1B visa program. Microsoft, a top 10 employer of H-1B visa holders, has been among the most vocal tech companies over the last several years urging Congress to raise the cap on H-1B visas. Now Grassley is urging Microsoft to furlough those temporary foreign workers first before handing out pink slips to Americans and permanent U.S. residents.

Someone on Beacon Hill ought to start thinking about how to attract American workers.

Let my people...go to the school of their choice!

I like this idea from the Center for Small Government. Educational choice that saves the taxpayers' money.

Each homeowner is taxed $3,000 a year for public schools.

Putting a student into the local public school COSTS taxpayers $7,500 per year.

NOT putting a student into the local public school system SAVES taxpayers $7,500 per year.

Taking a student out of the local public schools REDUCES the public school expenses $7,500 per year.

THE SMALL GOVERNMENT PROPOSAL FOR EDUCATIONAL FUNDING AND CHOICE : Every homeowner who does NOT put a student into the local public schools gets a 100% tax credit for the part of property taxes that pays for public schools. $3,000 back each year.

Each homeowner is free to choose. Use the public schools and pay the tax. Or don't use the public schools and don't pay the tax.

I would add one additional policy, which is that anyone can take the tax credit if they pay for a child to attend a private school. For instance, maybe there's a single mother who pays no property taxes because she rents an apartment, she wants to send her child to private school, but can't afford it. Why shouldn't her neighbor, a family member, a friend, or a alumnus of the school, be allowed to take the tax credit if they pay the tuition for the student (assuming they live in the town)?

The key is to rebate the property taxes though, otherwise the state will claim its "our" money, will all the strings and religious bigotry attached to it. A voucher system won't work for this reason, but the tax credit system will because it will allow true educational choice. Power to the people!

Brilliant

The Kiwis Have a Plan

Don't let people find out about this Deval. They might want to move to New Zealand. Or worse! Douglas proposes parallel tax plan

Act MP Sir Roger Douglas is proposing a new low-tax option for taxpayers in which the first $30,000 of income would be tax-free - but only if they pay for their own retirement, health care and welfare insurance or costs.

Income over the $30,000 tax-free threshold would be at a flat tax rate - 15 per cent - to be phased in over 15 years.

The Douglas plan would cut corporate tax rates to the same 15 per cent.

Sir Roger outlined his opt-in proposal to the Orewa Rotary Club.

He would inflation-proof the tax-free income so the $30,000 threshold would rise at the rate of inflation.

But rates would vary for income-earners with dependent children: the threshold for a couple with one child would be set at $50,000.

Families would have a guaranteed minimum income, so that if they earned less than the tax-free threshold they would receive a tax credit up to the threshold.

The Government would create superannuation savings accounts for individuals under Sir Roger's parallel tax plan, and those in the low-tax option would be guaranteed not to receive less than under the old system.

Sir Roger said the system would help the poor more than the wealthy.

"The poor are forced to queue for health care, while the wealthy get it when they need it through private provision," he said. "Only by restoring responsibility to individuals will we be able to tame the increasing cost of Government services."

Provision of services would be controlled by the individuals rather than bureaucrats and there would be an incentive to keep costs down.

Service providers would have an incentive to serve customers and be innovative, "not capture politicians and bureaucrats through lobbying".

Sir Roger, a reforming finance minister in the fourth Labour Government, criticised the last Labour-led Government's policies as well as the claims by the present National-led Government that it represents limited government.

He said last year's election was a choice between more spending by Labour or more spending and lower taxes from National.

"We offer a third option: less spending and lower taxes."

Read all about it!

There is no plan

Administration officials were greeted with sarcasm and laughter Monday night when they briefed lawmakers and congressional staff on Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's new financial-sector bailout project, according to people who were in the room.

The laughter was at its height when Obama officials explained that the White House planned to guarantee a wide swath of toxic assets -- which they referred to as "legacy assets" -- but wouldn't be asking Congress for money. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), a bailout opponent in the fall, asked the officials to give Congress the total dollar figure for which they were on the hook. The officials said that they couldn't provide a number, a response met by chuckling that was bipartisan, but tilted toward the GOP side. By guaranteeing the assets, Geithner hopes he can persuade the private sector to purchase a portion of them.

Yes we can...destroy a Presidency in less than one-month. Investors, economists, politicians, banks, insurance companies, America, the world have been waiting for the Obama Administration's plan to save the economy. Except...there is no plan.

Naked Capitalism isn't happy:

As one astute reader commented yesterday:

At least Paulson announced his plans. Not that he ever did anything he announced, but that's a small technicality. These guys can't even make an announcement.

Let us not forget that Paulson did manage to dispense the better part of $350 billion in a blinding show of Mussolini-styled corporatism. The new Treasury secretary exhibits similar Italian fascist tendencies, with even less ability to make the trains run on time.

Discussion Paper on the Mass Exodus

Here's the conclusion from the paper:

The interaction of several different factors (the size of the age cohort, educational attainment, and international immigration) all come together to create the population of young professionals. If policy makers wish to increase the supply of young, educated workers in the region, they would do well to consider not only domestic migration,
but international immigration policies as well as education policies.

Massachusetts needs to rely on international immigration policies...which will turn decidedly against immigration during a massive economic downturn. On top of which, the Congress and President are sticking xenophobic "Buy American" clauses into their legislation, at the very least fueling nativist sentiment.

Taxachusetts is Back in Black

Maybe global warming caused a glacier to melt and Taxachusetts escaped its icy prison.

Back in black
I hit the sack
It's been too long I'm glad to be back
Yes, I'm let loose
From the noose
That's kept me hanging around
I've been looking at the sky
and it's gettin' me high
Forget the hearse 'cause I never die
I got nine lives
Cats eyes

This time it's gas taxes...up 27 cents to make Massachusetts the highest in America!

Gov. Deval L. Patrick may seek a 27-cent-a-gallon increase in the state's gasoline tax as part of a comprehensive plan to overhaul transportation.

The proposal would boost the state's gas tax to 50.5 cents, the highest in the nation.

The Associated Press obtained a Patrick administration policy draft that said the added tax would be used to retire debt of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, finance regional transit authorities and take down some tolls on the Massachusetts Turnpike.

Home Prices Are Too High

Good thing the Federal government wants to prop them up.

One in five Massachusetts residents aged 25 to 39 plans to leave the state during the next five years, according to a survey released this week by the think tank MassINC.

Of the people who plan to leave, 32 percent told MassINC that the state's high cost of living was driving them to greener pastures. When asked what, if anything, could keep them here, respondents said lower taxes, more affordable housing and improved job opportunities.

Jaime A. Delaney, 32, of Chicopee, was one of the people surveyed. She said she understands why people plan to leave the state.

"I would if I could," she said. "Taxes are too high. It's too expensive to live here. It takes my whole paycheck just to feed my family and put gas in my car. It's horrible."

Delaney works as an order selector in a factory and has three children. An area native, she said family ties keep her in the Pioneer Valley.

"If my family lived somewhere else, I'd be gone in a heartbeat," she said.

Young adults planning to leave WMass.
Note that the article is from July 2008. Deval Partrick wants to raise taxes, there are fewer jobs, and the Feds are doing everything possible to keep home prices high.

And now even global warming is in doubt.

"As Chief of several of NASA Headquarters’ programs (1982-94), an SES position, I was responsible for all weather and climate research in the entire agency, including the research work by James Hansen, Roy Spencer, Joanne Simpson, and several hundred other scientists at NASA field centers, in academia, and in the private sector who worked on climate research," Theon wrote. "I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man made.”

Theon takes aim at the models, and implicitly criticises Hansen for revising to the data set:

“My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit. Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it.

"They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy.”

I'm a sceptic now, says ex-NASA climate boss

Gerard Jackson on Obama's Stimulus

Like it or not, to get a fairly good grip on why the Democrats' stimulus package and Obama's deep rooted hostility to tax cuts are so damaging one needs to get some understanding of the fallacious thinking being used by some economists to justify this so-called economic program. It is based on the assumption that the US is a two-stage economy. There is a production stage and a consumption stage. It logically follows from this view that the maintenance and supply of capital would depend entirely on consumer demand. It also follows that the case for consumer spending to promote economic recovery rests on the equally fallacious belief that recessions are produced by underconsumption.

However, we in a world of multiple stages of production. It can be no other way except under the most primitive economic conditions, the kind that would prevail among stone-age nomads who live a precarious existence on a day-to-day basis. The logic is therefore ineluctable: any policy that reduces spending between the stages of production by redirecting it to consumption will prolong a recession. Under these conditions one would find that consumer spending would rise relative to total business spending and that unemployment in the higher stages of production would also rise relative to those stages of production close to the point of consumption. This is precisely what happened during the disastrous Roosevelt administration.

America will pay a heavy price for Obama's economic illiteracy

Welfare Reform Undermined in Stimulus

Mickey Kaus is on the case:

GOP House leader John Boehner has issued an "alert" saying the stiumulus bill "undermines the 1996 welfare reforms by promoting bigger welfare rolls and expecting less work and less training on the part of government welfare recipients"