This was supposed to go up last night, but there was a glitch. Ten hours late sounds about right for California…
Archive for the ‘Welfare State’ Category
Texas vs. California: 12/12/12 Edition
Thursday, December 13th, 2012Texas Vs. California: 13 Days Before the Election Roundup
Wednesday, October 24th, 2012With the election less than two weeks away, time for a roundup of how the champions of their respective political models (Texas for Red States and California for Blue States) are doing:
The total personal income (TPI) in Texas reached $1.07 trillion dollars in the second quarter of this year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. That’s an increase of 71 percent from the state’s corresponding total 10 years earlier, $626.7 billion.
Here’s another way of looking at it: Texas accounted for 8.02 percent of the nation’s TPI this year, up 1.10 percentage points from 6.92 percent in 2002.
That’s nearly five times larger than the runner-up, Florida, which increased its share of national TPI by 0.23 points in a decade. Just four other states registered gains better than a tenth of a point.
(Hat tips for many Texas items: WILLisms’ Twitter feed.)
Texas vs. California Roundup: October 2, 2012
Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012Time for another Texas vs. California roundup. First up: The man who moved from one to the other:
(Hat tip: Willisms, City Journal, others.)
Help Me, Elspeth Reeve, You’re My Only Hope!
Monday, October 1st, 2012Let’s talk about the ObamaPhone video, shall we?
The video is both funny (the woman is an idiot with a comical voice) and politically useful (displaying, as it does, a sense of entitlement to government handouts).
So, naturally, some liberals are crying racism. Here the general case of “some liberals” is best exemplified by Elspeth Reeve. If that name rings a vague bell at the back of your mind, its probably because she’s most famous for violating journalistic standards by improperly fact-checking the articles by her husband, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, when he was smearing American troops in Iraq in a series in The New Republic.
Reeve has certified the ObamaPhone video as 100% racist:
The racism comes in when Drudge, Rush, the people who giddily retweeted the link, do a mental calculation that if enough people would just see this video they would support Romney, because it plays on the same racist stereotypes that are usually trotted out this time of the election cycle. The video posted on Drudge and played on Limbaugh was a black lady who has all the standard visual cues of being poor — messed-up teeth and skin, her waistline, her yelling. Oh, and if cues aren’t enough, she talks in racial terms: “Everybody in Cleveland, all the minorities got a phone. Keep Obama president, you know, he gave us a phone, he’ll give us more.”
Let’s dissect that a little. When Reeve says “do a mental calculation…because it plays on the same racist stereotypes ” what she’s saying is that she can read people’s minds, and she knows their intent is racist. And then she admits that the subject of the video talks in racial terms. So instead of putting the onus for bringing race into the discussion on the subject of the video herself who brings it up, she puts it on conservatives she can tell are committing thoughtcrimes because of her amazing telepathic powers.
Unfortunately, those of us without Elspeth Reeve’s extra-sensory perception are left at a loss to figure which amusing videos, at least those whose subjects happen to be black, are in fact racist. Given that I happen to be a white conservative living in Texas (and therefore someone already with a -5 on saving throws against liberal accusations of racism), obviously I need help in determining such things.
So where else can I go except the source itself? Help me, Elspeth Reeve, your psychic powers are the only hope I have for determining whether an amusing video that involves black people is racist or not!
Help me out here, Elspeth: Is Afro-Ninja racist?
How about this black woman saying Obama is going to pay her mortgage? Is that racist?
How about Obama stumbling around while answering a question? Is that racist?
How about Obama talking about visiting all 57 states? Is that racist?
How about black comedians dealing with racial issues. Is that racist? (NSFW warning applies to the language in the next few videos.) Is Dave Chappelle playing black white supremacist Clayton Bigsby racist?
How about Richard Pryor and Chevy Chase’s word association test?
How about Clevon Little in the famous sheriff-welcoming scene from Blazing Saddles?
Help me out here, Elspeth. Put your psychic powers to work. Which of these are racist, and which are merely funny?
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Dear California: You Know That Money Will Be Wasted, and You Know Those Tax Hikes Will Be Permanent
Friday, September 28th, 2012I’ve got another Texas vs. California piece coming around on the guitar, but I thought there was
Hold on to your hats, but it seems that California voters might, just might, be catching on that the Democrats who run California’s state government are wasting their money.
I will now wait for the indignant shouts of incredulous outrage to die down.
Support for Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan for billions of dollars in tax hikes on the November ballot is slipping amid public anxiety about how politicians spend money, but voters still favor the proposal, according to a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.
Well, I did say “might.”
The findings suggest that voters are leery of sending more cash to Sacramento in the wake of a financial scandal at the parks department, spiraling costs for a multibillion-dollar high-speed rail project to connect Northern and Southern California and ill-timed legislative pay raises.
If voters aren’t willing to stop spending for a $100 billion train to nowhere that everyone know will never be completed, and which would lose even more money every year if it was, when will they?
Brown’s measure would temporarily raise income tax rates on high earners for seven years and boost the state sales tax by a quarter-cent for four years in a bid to avoid steep cuts in funds for schools and other programs.
Note that word: “temporary.”
Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the way politics actually works knows that there’s no such thing as a “temporary” tax hike. The only thing that prevents Democrats (and establishment Republicans) from spending every cent of every tax collected and more is booting them out of office. Raising taxes simply ensures that they’ll spend all the new revenue and additional money they don’t have on top of that. And with the fiscal tsunami California is facing from bloated government, spiraling debt, and gold-plated public employee union pensions that will bankrupt the state, those “temporary” taxes will never be repealed. Ever.
And two or four years down the line, the next Democratic governor will be asking the voters to approve another “temporary” tax hike…
Texas vs. California: Dog Days of August Edition
Monday, August 27th, 2012It’s late August, and California’s slide toward insolvency continues apace.
Texas Vs. California: August 16, 2012
Thursday, August 16th, 2012Looks like California has done such a good dog of screwing the pooch that I may have to start doing these roundups weekly:
Texas vs. California: Summer of Bankruptcy Edition
Friday, August 10th, 2012Time for another look at how Texas’ Red State model stacks up against California’s Blue State model, with a roundup of relevant news from the past few weeks.
LinkSwarm for August 3, 2012
Friday, August 3rd, 2012A random compilation of vaguely interesting news that you may have already read elsewhere. So it goes:
(Hat tip: Dwight.)
That’s some industrial strength stupidity right there, Mr. Adam Smith: videotaping yourself being King of the Douchebags and then putting it up on YouTube yourself. What possible go wrong? Beside, you know, your company firing you for being King Douchebag.
The Myth of “Bloated Greek Defense Spending”
Tuesday, July 17th, 2012In order to divert attention away from the economic, moral, and political bankruptcy of Europe’s cradle-to-grave welfare state, some liberals, relying on figures from the Out of Our Ass Institute of Statistics, are tying to claim that Greece’s excessive spending comes from a “bloated defense budget.”
Try again. Greece only spends 5.5% of it’s budget on defense:
Either Europe (and the United States) must reform their runaway, bloated welfare states, or their welfare states will bankrupt their nations.