Senator Rand Paul has launched an old-fashioned filibuster against Obama’s CIA nominee John Brennan to protest the Obama Administration’s refusal to rule out drone strikes against U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.
And here’s Cruz getting in on the filibuster action:
This is potentially even a bigger story than it’s being made out to be (and it’s already plenty big). There’s lots of support for Rand and Cruz coming from some unusual quarters. I don’t have time to go into all the ramifications now, but this could be the issue on which finally the vast majority of Americans look at the unchecked growth of federal power under Obama and finally yells “Enough!”
No sooner did I post yesterday’s California vs. Texas update than all manner of related news pours forth.
First, I missed the news that John Stossel did a story on Texas vs. California back in January. That link takes you to the whole thing (which i haven’t watched yet), but here’s a taste featuring ex-Californian and current Texas Public Policy Foundation vice president of policy Chuck DeVore:
Naturally, the states media outlets are trying to downplay Texas’ advantage. Fortunately, here’s DeVore again debunking their claims good and hard. Read the whole thing.
Earlier this week, Texas Governor Rick Perry went on the offensive with a radio ad in California suggesting businesses relocate here:
Needless to say, California’s liberal establishment is perturbed.
It’s always fun to watch liberals stub their toes against reality. This time around it’s JournoLista Matthew Yglesias who is shocked, shocked to discover that trying to start a small business (in his case renting out a spare house) is wrapped up in bureaucratic red tape. When this was pointed out to him on Twitter, he protested that he had often complained about local government red tape. Fine and dandy, but why is he such an enthusiast for big government at the federal level?
His dichotomy of thought seems to suggest there are several blind-spots in his understanding of economics (a rather significant drawback for a journalist who regularly write about economics). Watching him fail to draw the obvious conclusions on the baleful effect of big government on small business is almost priceless in its cluelessness. Let’s discuss a few of the many, many ideas that never seemed to have occurred to him, shall we?
In ways big and small, every single day is like what Yglesias described for small business dealing with big government.
Trudging between bureaucrats, Yglesias should have thought to himself: “ObamaCare will be 1000 times worse for small business than this.” Because it will be. But of course he can’t do that, given what a cheerleader he is for ObamaCare and how he belittled business owner concerns. But it’s always different when it happens to you.
The idea that red tape scales (at a minimum) with the size of government does not seem to have occurred to him.
And excessive red tape begets excessive local red tape complying with federal mandates.
He complains that the process he had to go through could have been made more efficient. What does he think all those Democratic patronage machine jobs are for?
If he’s been writing about economics for years, but is just now discovering the problems of how big government slows down business, you wonder: Does he never get out of DC? He could have picked up the phone and talked to real business owners who work outside the Liberal Reality Bubble and discovered all this many many years ago.
Bureaucratic inefficiencies are much like cockroaches: for every instance you see, there are thousands you don’t. And just like cockroaches, they swarm and multiply off in the dark while you’re not looking.
I’m going to bet that Yglesias has never read James Q. Wilson’s Bureaucracy.
And yet there’s a certain perverse pleasure in watching Yglesias wrestle with the problems of big government and not draw the obvious conclusion. It’s like watching a man hold the 6th piece of a 6-piece jigsaw puzzle, look back and forth between the piece and hole and declare “I just don’t understand!” It’s like watching a blind man suddenly given sight and see the elephant he had been feeling for the first time in his life, then resolutely put on opaque glasses and mutter “No, that can’t be it.” Or like Butt-Head trying to figure out what happened to his TV:
He can’t figure it out because he won’t let himself figure it out. Too much of his own self-love is tied up in the notion that he’s good because he’s a liberal, and liberals are good because big government is good in and of itself. For every maddening piece of red tape, somewhere out there was a Matthew Yglesias who thought that having government run and regulate something was just a swell idea.
You do it to yourself, you do. And that’s what really hurts…
BATF tries to run a sting operation. The result? A lost machine gun, lost confidential information, $35,000 in stolen merchandise, and $15,000 unpaid bills.
“Gee, wouldn’t it be nice if the world had exactly zero guns in it? Then your daughter could fistfight her rapist.”
For Black History Month, here are Frederick Douglass quotes Including: “I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.”
Best Twitter quote this week comes, strangely enough, from game show host Chuck Woolery: “The Constitution is not outdated, it is just an inconvenience to progressives. They hate it. I love it. You should too.”
There’s much news about Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott as of late, so I’m just going to put it all here in this big virtual pile:
First, Abbott now has a hefty $18 million in his campaign fund, fueling speculation that he will be running for governor in 2014.
Rick Perry claims that if Perry runs again, Abbott won’t run against him, and that they’ve actually discussed this. Maybe. And maybe Perry’s not running again (he says he’ll decide in June or July). But frequently people have been known to misremember conversations, and politicians have been known to change their minds….
Long lines. It took 40 minutes for my friends to get in at noon, and about 28 minutes for me at 1 PM.
Here’s my video of the line:
And the show itself? Pricing on modern sport rifles (AKA “the guns Democrats want to ban because they look scary”) were ridiculous, double or triple what the asking price was before liberals started their latest gun control push, and there wasn’t a great selection on Glocks (I’m looking at a 4″ 9mm Glock as a carry gun).
Honestly, the most tempting thing there was a Barrett .50 BMG rifle at $4,000, which is about list, but: A.) It was the single shot, and I was more interested in a carbine model, which he also had…for $12,000, and B.) I think I need to embark on a rigorous weight-lifting regime before buying a Barrett; those suckers are heavy!
So I bought the traditional item people of my tribe buy when they can’t find a gun to buy at the gun show: venison jerky.
Dwight has now put up even more extensive contact information for Austin City Council and Travis County bigwigs, complete with linkable, clickable goodness, providing a more efficient way to express your displeasure over the proposed gun show ban.
Also, here’s Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson debating a gun grabber on the subject:
And here’s a KXAN piece on the issue, including the Abbott news I put up yesterday. Notice how the writer ends with “Both Biscoe and Eckhardt are Democrats. Abbott is a Republican.” Funny that no news outlet felt the need to mention the political affiliation of these seeking gun control (including Ed Scruggs, the Travis County resident initially reported as seeking such a ban, who also happens to be the founder of Circle C Democrats) until a Republican got involved in opposing them.
