Posts Tagged ‘Victor Davis Hanson’
Thursday, March 13th, 2014
Time for another roundup of Texas vs. California:
Texas surpasses California as the top tech exporter.
Victor Davis Hanson wants to “save” California by making liberals eat their own dogfood.
Texas is creating jobs at all income levels.
Vallejo still can’t afford its pensions:
The California city of Vallejo emerged from bankruptcy just over two years ago, but it is still struggling to pay its bills.
The main culprit: Ballooning pension costs, which will hit more than $14 million this year, a nearly 40% increase from two years ago.
Amid threats of legal action from the state’s pension giant, CalPERS, Vallejo did little during its nearly three-year stint in bankruptcy to stem the growth in its pension bills.
Rising CalPERS pension costs are also threatening Long Beach’s financial stability.
Berkeley is looking a little better for the short term, but after that they too will be feeling the CalPERS squeeze.
Pacific Grove is having a referendum to roll back pension increases.
California is getting ready to hike gas taxes again, adding another 12¢ a gallon to gas prices.
Is there a Democrat-on-Democrat battle over unions brewing in California?
California nursing home chain files for bankruptcy. “The dagger in the heart is that we have been overwhelmed by a wave of class-action lawsuits.”
A list of former Los Angeles city employees earning six figure pensions. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
California rancher’s are selling their cattle to Texas ranchers due to drought.
Cagney Global Logistics relocates from Denver to Irving, Texas.
San Jose-based sheet metal manufacturer Cortec is expanding in Pflugerville.
Even punk rock queen Exene Cervenka is getting out of California while the getting is good:
Now when I think about California, I think of a liberal oppressive police state and regulations and taxes and fees. I’d rather go someplace and have my own little place out on the edge of town. I’m a country girl at heart. It makes me happy when I see people in Texas open-carrying. It makes me feel safe. I’m not even a gun owner, but I’d like to see a gun rack in every pickup truck, like my boyfriend had when I was fifteen years old in Florida. An armed society is a polite society.
No End In Sight for Texas Oil Boom.
Tags:bankruptcy, Berkeley, Budget, California, CalPERs, Exene Cervenka, Long Beach, oil industry, Pacific Grove, pension crisis, Texas, unions, Vallejo, Vict, Victor Davis Hanson
Posted in Budget, Democrats, Texas, unions | No Comments »
Friday, October 11th, 2013
A LinkSwarm heavy on shutdown-related news:
For epitomizing what Democrats have done to Detroit, Kwame Kirkpatrick gets 28 years.
Hey Venezuela, how’s that Socialism working out for you? Inflation hits 49.4%. (Hat tip: Prairie Pundit.)
Victor Davis Hanson thinks Republicans are winning.
ObamaCare, or food?
Steyn on the shutdown. “The conventional wisdom of the U.S. media is that Republicans are being grossly irresponsible not just to wave through another couple trillion or so on Washington’s overdraft facility.”
Catholic priests prohibited from giving Mass.
The revolving door between the Democratic Party and the IRS.
How the GOP establishment tried to seize control of Freedomworks.
The Magic of Obama: White House gift shop goes bankrupt.
Department of Fish & Wildlife lift ban minutes before North Dakota files lawsuit.
Le Pen poised to win European Parliament elections? That’s Marine Le Pen, or Le Pen: The Next Generation.
Five years after the meltdown, families still hoarding cash.
Kent Hance to retire as Texas Tech Chancellor. Hance’s political career is in many ways emblematic of the evolution of Texas politics, starting out as a conservative Democrat, elected to the state Senate in 1974, defeating George W. Bush for a U.S. congressional seat in 1978, played key roll in backing the Kemp-Roth tax cuts in 1981, narrowly losing the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate to Lloyd Doggett (who would then get stomped by Phil Gramm in the general election) in 1984, followed Gramm by switching to the Republican Party in 1985, losing the GOP Gubernatorial nomination to an un-retired Bill Clements in 1986, getting appointed to the Railroad Commission in 1987, winning re-election to it in 1988, and losing to Clayton Williams in the 1990 Republican Gubernatorial primary. He had a long, long career as a bridesmaid…
Raising the debt limit means bankrupting your children.
“This 20 year old has discovered Sex Is Awesome!!! and just wants us all to know that. Yeah Sugar-Tits we sort of know. We’ve been enjoying it for years, but without quite as much Noob Squeeing about it.”
Tags:Bill Clements, Catholics, Crime, Democrats, France, George W. Bush, IRS, Kent Hance, Kwame Kilpatrick, Lloyd Doggett, Marine Le Pen, Mark Steyn, North Dakota, Obama, ObamaCare, Phil Gramm, Republicans, shutdown, socialism, Venuzuala, Victor Davis Hanson, War on Catholics
Posted in Crime, Democrats, ObamaCare | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, September 18th, 2013
Time for another Texas vs. California update:
CalPERS decides commoners are unworthy of knowing what their betters in the California state retiree system get paid.
New California law to shield pedophiles in teacher’s unions in California each year, seven to eight times as much sexual misconduct takes place in public schools as in the Catholic Church.
I’ve often thought Texas would consider doing this: Nevada gives mentally ill tickets to California.
You know all those pieces on how “California is back?” Yeah, not so much.
Because other states just aren’t getting enough businesses fleeing California, they’re moving to hike the minimum wage again.
Sacramento Convention Center loses $218 million over 14 years.
California bends over backwards to prevent jailed illegal aliens from being deported.
What it’s like living in bankrupt Stockton: “Anderson called the police recently after a boy was shot riding his bike down the alley that runs alongside her home. It took them four hours to show up.”
Judge rejects CalPERS, allows San Bernardino’s bankruptcy to proceed. Naturally CalPERS is incensed that their golden pension goose could be cooked along with everyone else.
California toll road agency misses overly optimistic projections, may have to declare bankruptcy. “The Foothill-Eastern Transportation Corridor Agency, which operates 39 miles (63 kilometers) of toll highways in Orange County, risks default on $2.4 billion in debt.”
Rick Perry goes fishing for new businesses to relocate to Texas in Maryland.
Also Missouri, where the Democratic governor just vetoed a tax cut.
Tags:California, CalPERs, Marylnd, Missouri, Rick Perry, Texas, Victor Davis Hanson
Posted in Democrats, Economics, Regulation, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »
Monday, July 8th, 2013
Funny how three day weekends where you have to work Friday always leave you with more stuff you need to do rather than less. So here’s the Friday LinkSwarm on Monday.
“Barack Hussein Obama: You Killed the Arab Spring.” And other anti-Obama signs from Egyptian protesters.
Why is Obama more concerned with Morsi being deposed than he ever was with Mori’s totalitarian destruction of Egypt’s democratic institutions?
Ted Cruz says that Obama is making the same mistake in Egypt he made in Iran.
“In government, Morsi and his allies had an impossible task: to make Egypt work. Now they have an easier one: watch it fail.”
Speaking of which, at least 50 people were killed in clashes between Egypt’s military and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Islamic terror group Boko Haram burns 30 people alive, most children in an attack on a boarding school in Nigeria.
Turkey imprisons more journalists than any other country.
Germany’s finance minister: “We should not accept Turkey as a full member … Turkey is not part of Europe.”
Thomas Sowell: “The political left’s welfare state makes poverty more comfortable, while penalizing attempts to rise out of poverty. Unless we believe that some people are predestined to be poor, the left’s agenda is a disservice to them, as well as to society.”
“All the net growth in employment among the working-age (ages 16–65) over the last decade went to immigrants (legal and illegal). Since 2000 the total number of immigrants employed is up by 5.3 million, while native-born employment is down 1.3 million.”
“Modern liberalism, among other things, is a psychological state, in which very-well-off Americans find ways through their income and privilege to be exempt from the ramifications of their own ideologies, while adopting causes and pets that exempt them from guilt over their own status and limitless opportunities. Judging by their concrete actions, they are indifferent to the poor whom they romanticize at a safe distance.”
Conservatives take aim at Lamar Alexander.
The bill Wendy Davis killed would have required abortion clinics to meet the same safety standards as clinics that perform LASIK.
Disgraced former NY governor to run for New York City comptroller…against his former madam. Gee, the Eliot Spitzers and Anthony Weiners of the world must really miss all the fawning and graft.
UT ranks 26th on the list of top 100 universities in the world. Don’t know how accurate that ranking is, but it must rankle Yalies to rank a mere 10th…and behind Harvard!
How does a Western cost $250 million to make, even after Johnny Depp has taken a pay cut? Unless half the budget went to cocaine?
What’s the difference between MSNBC and paint drying? A: Some people watch paint dry.
Tags:abortion, Boko Haram, Democrats, Egypt, Elections, Jihad, Media Watch, Mohammed Morsi, MSNBC, Muslim Brotherhood, New York City, Nigeria, Obama, Ted Cruz, terrorism, Texas, Thomas Sowell, Turkey, Victor Davis Hanson, Welfare State
Posted in Economics, Jihad, Media Watch, Texas, Welfare State | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 24th, 2013
So much new Boston Bomber information has come to light that I thought I’d put a big old LinkSwarm on just that topic:
It’s the Jihad, stupid.
Mother of the Boston bombers: “If they are going to kill him. I don’t care. My oldest son is killed, so I don’t care. I don’t care is my youngest son is going to be killed today. I want the world to hear this. And, I don’t care if I am going to get killed too. And I will say Allahu Akbar!” Media: Just what is she trying to say? I don’t understand! It’s like she’s speaking in code!
Mark Steyn: “As is now traditional in these stories, we’re now being told that the Brothers Tsarnaev are merely the latest card-carrying members of Local 473 of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves.”
Kurt Schlichter: “’Extraordinary’ is the natural condition of Americans.”
John Hindraker asks why does evil make liberals stupid?
The Boston bombers were living the life of welfare queens.
After it bombed in Boston, the bombing brothers were looking forward to taking their show to Broadway.
Here’s all about the mosque at the center of the bombing investigation. If it’s at the center, I guess that makes it the Ground Zero Mosque…
Speaking of which, the mastermind behind the original is buying up more New York City property in the area.
Victor Davis Hanson: What the Tsarnaev case teaches about immigration.
Naturally, clueless apologists set up a #FreeJahar tag on Twitter. As Aaron Gardner noted: “If twitter had been around in the time of Jesus there would have been a #FreeBarabbas tag.” And just imagine the reality show potential! “It’s down to two! No one will want to miss the stunning climax of Survivor: Golgatha!”
To me, Free Jahar sounds like a heartwarming, direct-to-DVD Disney film about a boy and his magic genie trying to free an Islamic whale.
Russia tried to warn us about the Tsarnaev brothers. Repeatedly. By the standards of perfect hindsight liberals applied to Bush43 after 9/11, doesn’t that make Obama a traitor?
A Venn diagram of terrorist watch lists.
So who was Misha, the radical Islamist who became Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s mentor?
Via Michael Totten comes Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Amazon wish list. Hard to tell from that whether he wanted to become a terrorist, a singer or a Mafia wiseguy…
I’m seeing a report that the Boston Bomber Brothers are members of a Wahabist terrorist cell Problem: That report comes from DEBKA, a site that has a track record only slightly better than Infowars, so take it with a shaker full of salt.
Speaking of Infowars, guess what site Tamerlan Tsarnaev like to read?
The Onion: “I’m starting to think that maybe when Tamerlan first said ‘Let’s bomb the Boston Marathon,’ I should have said no.”
While you were paying attention to Boston, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police broke up a plot to bomb a passenger train.
Tags:Bombing, Boston, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Ground Zero Mosque, Islam, Jihad, Kurt Schlichter, LinkSwarm, Mark Steyn, Media Watch, New York City, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Victor Davis Hanson
Posted in Crime, Jihad, Media Watch | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 29th, 2013
Instead of going out and doing the heavy lifting myself on a Texas vs. California update, Victor Davis Hanson [[Corrected. – LP]] has done another of his California is totally screwed pieces, and it’s a cornucopia of facts on California’s decline.
A few tidbits:
Salinas just named an elementary school after a serial cop killer
Racist Latino gangs are now driving black families straight out of Compton
“Hundreds of thousands of the working and upper-middle class, mostly from the interior of the state, have fled — maybe four million in all over the last thirty years, taking with them $1 trillion in capital and income-producing education and expertise. Apparently, they tired of high taxes, poor schools, crime, and the culture of serial blame-gaming and victimhood.”
“One of every three welfare recipients lives in California.”
Read the whole thing.
Tags:Border Controls, California, Crime, Democrats, Economics, fraud, liberal racism, Victor Davis Hanson, waste, Welfare State
Posted in Border Control, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, October 31st, 2012
Six days to the election, and I’ve spent most of the night handing out candy. Six days until we choose to follow the successful Texas Red State path of low taxes and limited government, or the failing Blue State California path of bankruptcy and bigger government.
CalPERS sues Compton to force the bankrupt city to keep donating to the underfunded, soon-to-be-bankrupt state pension fund.
Incarcerating someone in a California prison guards costs and average of $47,000 a year. Ridiculous guard salaries and perks.
Texas has one of the lowest State-Local debt burdens in the country.
For a contrarian view, Victor David Hanson offers up reasons not to leave California.
Nothing at all to do with politics, but I can’t resist noting that the “Dream Team” Los Angeles Lakers have hit a little snag on their way to going undefeated in the regular season. Meanwhile, the completely gutted and rebuilt Houston Rockets are 1-0. You take your satisfaction where you can find it…
Tags:2012 Election, Budget, California, CalPERs, Economics, Elections, Texas, Victor Davis Hanson
Posted in Budget, Economics, Elections, Texas | 2 Comments »
Monday, February 14th, 2011
And they’re every bit as warm as those for Spiderman: Turn off the Dark:
Mary Steyn: “For the last three weeks, the superpower has sent the consistent message to the world that (as Bernard Lewis feared some years ago) America is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.”
Niall Ferguson in Newsweek (yes, it’s evidently still being published):
“Last week, for the second time in his presidency, Barack Obama heard those footsteps, jumped up to grasp a historic opportunity … and missed it completely….This failure was not the result of bad luck. It was the predictable consequence of the Obama administration’s lack of any kind of coherent grand strategy, a deficit about which more than a few veterans of U.S. foreign policy making have long worried….The defining characteristic of Obama’s foreign policy has been not just a failure to prioritize, but also a failure to recognize the need to do so. A succession of speeches saying, in essence, ‘I am not George W. Bush’ is no substitute for a strategy.”
Michael A. Walsh in the New York Post: “No matter how things shake out in Egypt, one thing has become depressingly clear: Something is very wrong with the American intelligence services.”
Investor’s Business Daily:
“As our once-stable ally Egypt hurtles down a path leading into the dark unknown, the U.S. can blame itself. The White House apparently did little after our intelligence agencies warned late last year that President Hosni Mubarak’s government was wobbly. Like Jimmy Carter’s handling of Central America, the U.S. backed a revolution, hoping it would make the revolutionaries our friends.”
Victor Davis Hanson in National Review: “For nearly three weeks, the Biden/Clinton/Obama policy concerning the tottering Mubarak regime was contradictory, incoherent, and predicated entirely on the perceived pulse of the demonstrations.”
Like Julie Taymor’s production (which I have not seen, but I have seen enough of Ms. Taymor’s previous work to trust the reviews of it I’ve read), Obama’s foreign policy is far more concerned with flash and spectacle than the boring matter of actual substance. Unfortunately, there’s no chance that Obama’s foreign policy will fold in previews, and we can’t make things better by getting Bono and The Edge to write us a few new tunes…
Tags:Egypt, Foreign Policy, Hosni Mubarak, Jihad, Mark Steyn, Michael A. Walsh, Middle East, Niall Ferguson, Obama, Spiderman: Turn off the Dark, Victor Davis Hanson
Posted in Democrats, Foreign Policy, Jihad | No Comments »