BHO's Cap and Trade Tax - Page 5 - Big Big Forums

SurferGirl · 06-28-2009, 12:15 AM

Or volunteer to help his opponent next time they are up for re-election.
It is nice to volunteer and help out in a campaign. At least it makes you feel that you are doing your best.

Jolie Rouge · 06-30-2009, 01:06 AM

Cap-and-tax job loss chart of the day;
Plus: A Senate reading assignment[/b]
June 29, 2009 04:13 PM

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/06/29...ng-assignment/

A reader with deep expertise in the mining industry took the time to break down the House members who voted yes to cap-and-tax on Friday by coal-producing state. He writes:

Quote:

I just developed a table of all the Representatives from coal-producing states who voted for Cap & Trade. Included on the table is 2007 statistics for surface-mined and underground-mined coal production (1000s of st) from each of the coal-producing states; number of employees in the coal mining industry for each coal-producing state; number of union employees in the coal industry in each coal-producing state; and the Representative and district represented for each of the cretins who voted for Cap and Trade from, again, each of the coal-producing states.

It is interesting to note…that the coal mines are very capital intensive. That is, they require very large investments in capital equipment to mine the coal. Now, Harnischfeger Corp, a division of Joy Global, makes large mining shovels and draglines. Joy Global is based out of Milwaukee (100 East Wisconsin Ave., Suite 2780, Milwaukee). Its workers are likely union (I’m looking into the numbers and union affiliation), most likely Steel Workers, UAW and/or Teamsters. Joy Mining Machinery manufactures large, expensive underground mining machinery.

Bucyrus International is another manufacturer of large mining machinery–large shovels and draglines, large underground equipment. It, too, is based out of Milwaukee (PO Box 500, 1100 Milwaukee Ave., Milwaukee). It, too, is very much a union operation (Steelworkers , etc).

And then there’s Caterpillar Corp. As we all know, it’s based out of Peorial, Il. Steelworkers, too. Remember this:

Quote:

“EAST PEORIA, Ill. - President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan may be good for Caterpillar Inc., but the company’s chief executive says the equipment maker will probably have to lay off more staff before it starts thinking about rehiring any of the more than 22,000 employees it already plans to cut.

Even if a stimulus plan passes, it likely will not have an effect on the economy until late this year or early 2010, CEO Jim Owens said after a town hall meeting with the president and Caterpillar workers at a company tractor plant here on Thursday.”

The effect of Cap and Trade on the coal mines and their employees is only the tip of the iceberg. What about all the suppliers? These are just some of the big equipment manufacturers, but there are many, many smaller companies. What about the local suppliers of fuel oil to power those great big haul trucks. Fuel’s going to go up, too.

I put together this table because it’s not only the “Fool 8 republicans who voted for this atrocity that should be given the boot in 2010. Any and all of the Representatives from coal-producing states who voted for Cap and Trade should be given the Bum’s Rush next election.[/quote]

I’ve uploaded the entire spreadsheet from reader MINER51 here.

If you live in one of these states, be sure to send a copy to your Senate reps. Who knows? Maybe they’ll actually read it before they vote.

***

On a related note, it seems like people are waking up to the story I blogged and columnized about last week regarding EPA’s suppressed global warming study (see June 24 and June 26). Alan Carlin’s study, which you read about in full here just past midnight on June 26, should be required reading for every single Senator before the cap-and-tax vote next week.

Anthony Watts has the final version of the report here. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/2...-final-report/

I’d like to see someone read the entire study on the Senate floor.

The Executive Summary of the report is absolutely devastating. It destroys in absolutely sound scientific terms the entire Climate Change/Global Warming premise.

See also
http://youhavetobethistalltogoonthis...-july-tea.html

Global warming “deniers” are committing “treason” against the planet
http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/20...re-committing/

He promised to bankrupt the coal industry during the campaign. At least he kept one of those promises

Jolie Rouge · 07-01-2009, 06:43 PM

Obama to Democrats: Lincoln wants you to pass cap and trade

Need an laugh today ?

Read this. http://www.mererhetoric.com/archives/11275683.html

Boy, you know, those dead presidents just seem to be able to say whatever The B.O. wants them to say.

Maybe we should have a new Czar of Channeling.

***

Flashback: The Obamasburg Address http://massbackwards.blogspot.com/20...en-warned.html

Quote:

The Obamasburg Address
Washington DC
February 12, 2009

Three weeks and two days ago our community organizers and voter fraud operatives brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Socialism, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created to be subservient to their government.

Now we are engaged in a great class war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave up their individual liberty that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The gullible voters, living and dead, who were bamboozled here, have consecrated it, far above the diminished power of the people to detract. The media will little note, nor long remember what we are actually doing here, nor will it ever admit what they did here. It is for us the powerful centralized government, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so fraudulently advanced. It is rather for us, the ones we have been waiting for, to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these uneducated, unskilled masses we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these useful idiots shall not have voted, however many times, in vain — that this nation, under Me, shall have a new birth of HopenchangeTM — and that government of the lobbyists, by the politically-connected, for the career politicians, shall not perish from the earth.”

Quote:

President Obama has urged supporters to help the United States remain “the last, best hope of Earth.” He has ordered staff members to “think anew and act anew.” And he has assailed the “worn-out dogmas” of political ideology.

Each time, his words were reminiscent of those of Abraham Lincoln.

Obama, like so many of his predecessors, wants to link himself to one of history’s greatest presidents.

“He sees Lincoln as a model,” said Fred Kaplan, author of “Lincoln: The Biography Of A Writer.” “Obama echoes Lincoln.”

Also, as the nation’s first black president, Obama can “suggest he’s helping to complete the unfinished work of American democracy that Lincoln spoke about at Gettysburg,” said Harold Holzer, a historian and co-chair of the United States Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

Wednesday evening, Obama honored Lincoln at a gala at Ford’s Theatre, the recently renovated hall where Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. Thursday the president will discuss Lincoln again as he travels to Springfield, Ill., for the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth…

…Obama borrows Lincoln’s phrases and pacing. In June, when he clinched the Democratic nomination, Obama urged backers to see this as “the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope of Earth.”

The phrase comes not from a Lincoln speech, but from his written 1862 message to Congress, in which he urged members to continue backing the war to save the Union: “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”

Obama outlined his admiration for Lincoln in a 2005 essay for Time magazine. He cited Lincoln’s “humble beginnings,” as well as his “rise from poverty, his ultimate mastery of language and law, his capacity to overcome personal loss and remain determined in the face of repeated defeat.”

Obama’s Lincoln-mania has drawn critics over the years.

http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/2...ES01/092120350

60 senate votes. obama gets what obama wants.
No doubt and you have the House Republican Whip going out of his way to defend the Crap and Tax 8 saying that they voted for the bill, because they thought it would help get a better bill latter when it comes back to the House and Reicherts response to why he voted for the bill:

Quote:

“This bill is not perfect, but it is a vital step toward energy independence. America cannot maintain global leadership without innovation and new ideas, and we cannot lead if we increasingly depend on foreign nations to heat our homes and move people and goods. The price of inaction is too great; America cannot stand on the sidelines while our competitors embrace new energy efficient technologies. It’s also important that we engage in a bipartisan discussion as we move forward – this bill has many other hoops to jump through before it becomes law and I will continue to work with my colleagues across the aisle and in the Senate to gain more tax relief for middle-income families.

He is sounding more and more like Obama everyday.

Obama will tag anything onto past civil rights workers, because he has no American civil rights experience. Reading about it, or studying at the knee of your mother is far different than living it. A personal view of that movement escapes him but is convenient to usurp and use for his own purpose. Shame on him. Shame on those that allow him to get away with it.

I love how people consistently revise history. How many times do they need to hear that Lincoln is on the record saying that he would gladly throw the every slave under the bus (back then it would have been “locomotive”) to preserve the Union.

The Civil War was about power. Lincoln refused to accept the loss of the South, and was willing to shed a LOT of blood to keep that power.

Full Stop.

Stuff like this is why I was posting at other blogs, before I even became aware that Rush Limbaugh had similar suspicions, that his delusions of grandeur and sense of entitlement will demand he find a way around the 22nd Amendment. http://www.grouchyconservativepundit...hp?topic=763.0

Quote:

Whether that be by Michelle O running in 2016, or Obama seeking the nomination, and a SCOTUS decision that will go Obama’s way if he replaces any one of Kennedy, Roberts, Thomas, Scalia or Alito holding the 22nd Amendment as unconstitutional (I don’t think he has time to overcome the requirement of a super majority of the states required for an actual amendment over turning the 22nd), I seriously suspect, one way or the other, we’ll have a President Obama in 2017 if we have one in 2013.

BTW, I am fully aware, on its face, SCOTUS ruling on a Constitutional amendment is laughable, but we already have seen the California Supremes rule on whether or not a constitutional amendment was constitutional…

BTW, the ACORN/Rahm-bo 2010 census will be used to reapportion the House of Representatives (and the Electoral College) for the 2012 elections.

Add on 30 million or so grateful former illegals granted amnesty, and same day registration/voting, and the fact that probably something close to 90% of the Black population will again vote for him, Obama can be trailing by a fair amount among actual current US citizens who pay taxes and only vote once, and still easily win in 2012.

Remember the lesson of Franken and Gregoire and the special NY election, if it is close, the Demoncrats will steal it.

o/t but they aren’t coming for YOUR guns. Not really. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6505651.html

Jolie Rouge · 07-02-2009, 01:13 AM

Here is the cap-and-tax “placeholder:” Where’s the fine print?
By Michelle Malkin • July 1, 2009 02:24 PM
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/07/01...he-fine-print/

When I live-blogged the House debate on cap-and-tax last Friday, I noted the existence of a “placeholder” in the bill. Rep. Joe Barton mentioned it was unprecedented to have such a mechanism (allowing bill-writers to insert language to be determined after the law was approved) in a bill up for final passage. Later, I noted that Barney Frank explained on the floor on Friday that the placeholder in the cap and trade bill apparently will deal with regulations of financial derivatives market associated with reducing carbon emissions. Frank said he was confident a “good system will be in place.”

Well, I looked up the placeholder in Waxman’s late-night, 300-page manager’s amendment. http://energycommerce.house.gov/Pres...r2454__ans.pdf

Here it is. First, in the table of contents:

And in the text:

Now, since everyone in Washington is so concerned with fine print, why don’t they show us the fine print of the missing section of this bill.

Where is it?

Has the Energy Czar seen it?

Will the members of the Senate see it?

:

Quote:

Rep. Joe Barton mentioned it was unprecedented to have such a mechanism (allowing bill-writers to insert language to be determined after the law was approved) in a bill up for final passage.

How is that even possible to allow a bill to be changed after the fact? If passed (and then added to later), couldn’t it be challenged in court as invalid, at least requiring a second vote?

Jolie Rouge · 07-03-2009, 01:16 AM

I’m hearing from many old friends and readers that GOP Rep. Dave Reichert in Washington state is in hot water over his cap-and-tax vote.

KVI talk show host and GOP activist Kirby Wilbur says the vote was “make or break” for grass-roots conservatives in the 8th district. Party precinct officers, donors, and volunteers have been flooding phone lines in opposition to Reichert’s vote. Washington state conservatives on Facebook bombarded Wilbur’s page with hundreds and hundreds of comments after last Friday’s vote.

GOP party leaders have tried to quell the revolt, but are only digging themselves a deeper hole. Kirby told me he received a solicitation from the NRCC signed by John Boehner asking GOP activists for money to fight Democrats who voted for cap-and-tax.

Insert bitter laughter here.

At the same time the NRCC excoriates Democrats for the cap-and-tax vote, it continues to support, defend, and raise money for Republicans who voted the same way.

KTTH talk show host David Boze has audio of Reichert’s rationalization here.

The word “delusional” comes to mind:
http://www.mynorthwest.com/?nid=194&sid=184941

Quote:

Heritage Foundation, and Wall Street Journal were predicting. He argued that it would cost around $.48 per day and that we would have better national security, more nuclear, coal and refining capabilities, and a cleaner environment with the bill. He argued that the conservative arguments against were mistaken, and that Washington specifically would be better off even though the bill was imperfect.

"IMPERFECT" ???

:

Not that he bothered to read it all before he determined that, of course…

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/07/02...tionalization/

HotMES » Proposed costs are always lower than actual costs
http://moniquestuart.com/2009/07/02/...-actual-costs/

Jolie Rouge · 07-03-2009, 01:50 AM

AIP Column: Obama’s Utopia
posted at 2:15 pm on July 2, 2009 by Ed Morrissey

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/0...obamas-utopia/

This week’s AIP column riffs off of yesterday’s Obamateurism, which I think deserves wider dissemination as a look into the poor judgment of President Obama. If anyone wanted to pick a worse example of a state managing its economy, California would be hard to beat.

And yet Obama held up the Golden State as an example of what can happen when government imposes heavy-handed energy policies:

Quote:

Does anyone at the White House ever brief the President on the economic crisis? California’s unemployment has been higher than the national average for years, thanks to a flight of capital from the state’s onerous taxes and workers-comp regulations. This year, though, the problem has been particularly bad. The state has had double-digit unemployment since the beginning of the year, which means less energy needed for economic production, and the economy of the state teeters on depression.

As for its energy usage, the Washington Examiner explains how the state has reduced its need, and it wasn’t through smart planning. California has lost 21% of its manufacturing base since 2000, which produced a sharp drop in energy usage – as well as a big drop in revenues for the state and higher unemployment. Energy costs in California are much higher than in the rest of the nation, as much as 50% higher for residential rates than the average.

That amounts to a big tax on California residents, which is one reason more people are fleeing California than entering it.

This brings us back to the cap-and-trade bill that just passed the House. Eventually, the costs of such a system will place the same kind of tax on everyone in the nation for energy consumption, and not just on electricity. The cost of refining gasoline will increase as refiners have to buy carbon credits. The same will happen to heating oil in parts of the country.

Bottom line: if you liked the inflation and eroded buying power of last year’s gas-price spike, you’ll love cap-and-trade’s taxation on all Americans.

California should serve as a warning to others, not as an example of public-policy success. One would think that obvious when the state in question is issuing IOUs instead of paying its bills, but Obama apparently can’t buy a clue.

Don’t forget to check out the rest of the AIP crew, too. Lorie Byrd looks at the lack of urgency to treat patients that comes with single-payer health care. http://www.americanissuesproject.org...alth-care.aspx Nick DeLeeuw needs a Presidential hug, too. http://www.americanissuesproject.org...decisions.aspx John Hanlon discusses what it will take to make the US Post Office profitable. http://www.americanissuesproject.org...t-part-ii.aspx Be sure to read it all! http://www.americanissuesproject.org/blogs/

Quote:

This week’s AIP column...

http://www.americanissuesproject.org...ic-policy.aspx

Quote:

... yesterday’s Obamateurism ...

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/0...of-the-day-68/

----

Miserable Failure

That's the Obama administration's "stimulus" plan, which mainly stimulated Democratic constituencies with great gobs of pork. The web site Innocent Bystanders has done a service by plotting the actual unemployment rate against the Obama administration's prediction of what would happen with and without the "stimulus." Here is the latest, updated through June; http://michaelscomments.wordpress.co...s-by-only-0-1/

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive...mb-410x250.gif[/

The administration's forecast provides a benchmark against which we can
judge the success or failure of the $700 billion porkapalooza. The result is obvious: it was a failure. The best thing Congress could do is to cancel the rest of the program--the large majority that remains unspent--and let the economy recover without being hampered by government-imposed inefficiencies.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive.../07/023957.php

whatever · 07-03-2009, 02:31 PM

I saw where CAlifornia is now giving out IOU's because they are so IN debt.
ANd this is def. NOT going to help them! Can you imagine if this passes what it will not only do to our utilities,but what about small businesses who can barely stay above water?
So they would either be forced to skyrocket their prices or close? And then a ton of more job loss. I really don't think people understand what this is going to do if it passes........

Jolie Rouge · 07-06-2009, 01:20 PM

We celebrated our freedoms this Independence Day. Now, it’s time to fight for them. Hope you are feeling energized. There is much work to be done.

On the front-burner: Defeating the cap-and-tax bill. http://michellemalkin.com/2009/07/06...-and-tax-bill/

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee begins hearings on Tuesday.

Spruiell and Williamson have an excellent rundown of Waxman-Markey’s garden of piggish delights. http://article.nationalreview.com/?q...mM2MWE=&w=MA==

The unions get a cap-and-pay-off. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...070402021.html

Heritage must-read research and analysis here. http://www.heritage.org/LeadershipFo...nvironment.cfm

Which senators to target? Here: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,6281299.story

Quote:

Democrats and the two independents who caucus with them control 60 Senate seats. But more than a dozen have expressed concern over costs. They include Democrats from industry-heavy Ohio and Michigan, coal-dependent Indiana and oil-rich Louisiana.

Only a few Republicans appear open to emissions limits, notably two moderates from Maine — Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe — and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who championed emissions limits in his presidential campaign (though he has expressed reservations about the House bill).

The Senate bill will emerge from several committees — including the finance, foreign relations, commerce and agriculture committees — with dramatically different memberships and priorities.

The energy committee already has approved its chunk with wide bipartisan support. It includes a requirement to produce more electricity from renewable sources, but also expands drilling — a possible deal-breaker for environmentalists.

Boxer’s committee will center its work on cap and trade. The House bill would cut U.S. emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% by 2050. Environmentalists expect Boxer, who said she was “looking closely” at those limits, to strengthen them.

Yes, the fate of cap-and-tax is in the hands of Republicans like John McCain.

As I warned last May, Sen. McCain has been a member of the global warming hysteria cult for years. A reminder: http://michellemalkin.com/2008/05/12...-cooler-heads/

Quote:

Climatologist Patrick Michaels had McCain pegged four years ago, when The Maaaveerrick convened ridiculously, eco-Chicken Little-stacked hearings: http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.as...20041119a.html

Quote:

Recent U.S. Senate hearings into alleged global warming, chaired by Arizona Republican John McCain, were among the “most biased” that a noted climatologist has ever seen - “much less balanced than anything I saw in the Clinton administration,” he said.

Patrick J. Michaels is the author of a new book “Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media.” He is an environmental sciences professor at the University of Virginia who believes that claims of human-caused “global warming” are scientifically unfounded.

Michaels spoke with CNSNews.com Thursday following a panel discussion sponsored by the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., where Michaels also serves as a senior fellow in environmental studies.

“John McCain, a Republican, has probably held the most biased hearing of all,” Michaels said. McCain is a big proponent of limiting greenhouse gas emissions, which he believes are causing “global warming.” The Arizona senator also “is trying to define himself as an environmental Republican, which he is going to use to differentiate himself from his rivals for the (presidential) nomination in 2008,” according to Michaels.

You can bet McCain won’t be visiting with Michaels on his climate change tour anytime soon. The truth would get in the way of his crusade:

Quote:

Citing a visit he had to the Arctic with several U.S. senators last summer, McCain made it clear that he believed human-caused “global warming” was a certainty. “It was remarkable going up on a small ship next to this glacier and seeing where it had been just 10 short years ago and how quickly it’s receded,” McCain told the New York Times…

…McCain also warned about what he saw as the rapid pace of Arctic warming, evidenced by the arrival of wildlife that had never previously been seen in the region. “The Inuit language for 10,000 years never had a word for robin and now there are robins all over their villages,” he told the Times.

Michaels refuted McCain’s assertions about the North Pole, noting that the Arctic has actually been warmer in the past than it is now. “It was warmer 4 to 7,000 years ago [in the Arctic.] Every climatologist knows that. I saw no mention of that in the Arctic report that was paraded in front of McCain,” Michaels said. He added that the past warming of the Arctic couldn’t possibly be blamed on greenhouse gas emissions since it occurred long before the industrial era.

In 2003, Iain Murray debunked McCain’s anecdote about how he got interested in global warming:

Quote:

He is on record as saying that the reason he became interested in global warming in the first place is because he recognized how much hotter it was getting at his home in Sedona, Ariz. Unfortunately, the data don’t back him up on this. If we look at the temperature records from the nearby Childs weather station, we can actually see a downward trend in temperature of slightly over 1° F. since 1986, when McCain was elected to the Senate. Another nearby station, Fort Valley, shows a very slight upwards trend. You can see these trends for yourself by looking at the official records available at the CO2science.org website. Certainly there are upward trends elsewhere in Arizona, but these are balanced by downward trends — Tucson has cooled while Tombstone has warmed. Arizona makes a poor poster boy for global-warming theory.

Like Barack Obama, McCain touts a “cap-and-trade” system as the free-market answer to reducing carbon emissions. Analysts who haven’t been bitten by the global warming alarmist bug beg to differ–and evidence from cap-and-trade systems already in operation back them up:

Quote:

….the world has already witnessed many unpleasant surprises with Europe’s ongoing efforts to impose a cap and trade program under the Kyoto Protocol, the international climate treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In fact, European efforts have racked up significant costs while failing to reduce emissions. Nearly every European country participating has higher emissions today than when the treaty was first signed in 1997. Further, despite ongoing criticism of the United States from Kyoto parties for failing to ratify the treaty, emissions in many of these nations are actually rising faster than in the United States.

The European experience also shows the problem of cap and trade fraud.[6] None other than Enron’s Ken Lay was a strong supporter of carbon cap and trade when the idea was first floated in the 1990s, saying that it could “do more to promote Enron’s business than almost any other regulatory initiative.” These carbon allowances that will be bought and sold have a value estimated at $50 billion to $300 billion annually, and the trade in them would be a huge new business. Enron may be gone, but others ready to take advantage of cap and trade–often at public expense–are not.

Sen. McCain needs to hear from folks other than Al Gore acolytes. Someone might want to introduce him, for example, to Alan Carlin. http://michellemalkin.com/2009/06/29...ng-assignment/

With cap and TRADE, Wall Street becomes relevant again, this time trading fictional carbon credits instead of toxic assets… and Congressional coffers will remain filled.

Jolie Rouge · 07-07-2009, 01:03 AM

Monday, July 6, 2009
States in dire straits

Illinois is a mess: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/new...7?OpenDocument

Quote:

The governor and lawmakers went home for the Independence Day holiday, vowing to return for a special session set to begin July 14. But they've earned no time off, least of all for good behavior.

The state has a $9 billion deficit to fill — including huge debts carried over from the preceding budget year. Many state functions will continue, at least for the time being. But just before the holiday break, the governor vetoed a bill that would have continued funding state social services, albeit at dramatically lower levels.

California is handing out IOU's instead of checks.

Kevin Hassett has written an excellent article on how the insolvency of this once great state may ensure the defeat of ObamaCare:

Quote:

It takes years and years to make a mess as terrible as the California debacle, but the recipe is simple. All that you need is two political parties that are always willing to offer easy government solutions for every need of the voters, but never willing to make the tough decisions necessary to finance the government largess that results. Voters will occasionally change their allegiance from one party to the other, but the bacchanal will continue regardless of the names on the office doors.

California has engaged in an orgy of spending, but, compared with our federal government, its legislators should feel chaste. The California deficit this year is now north of $26 billion. The U.S. federal deficit will be, according to the latest numbers, almost 70 times larger.

The federal picture is so bleak because the Obama administration is the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of the U.S. I would imagine that he would be the intergalactic champion as well, if we could gather the data on deficits on other worlds. Obama has taken George W. Bush’s inattention to deficits and elevated it to an art form.

Read the rest. http://www.americanissuesproject.org...ic-policy.aspx Obama spends like a drunken sailor on steroids in every area except one -- defense : http://blog.american.com/?p=2774 (Come to think of it, there's a good chance we'd be better off with that drunken sailor than with the Obama administration.)

The New York state legislature is beyond dysfunctional:

Quote:

For almost a month, ever since Republicans briefly won two Democrats to their side and tried to seize control, the state Senate in New York has been paralyzed, split 31 to 31, as a stack of legislation -- legalizing same-sex marriage, extending the mayor's control of New York City schools, renewing the authority local governments need to conduct business -- sits in limbo.

During that time lawmakers have convened dueling sessions -- each claiming legitimacy -- huffed over which party should lead members in the Pledge of Allegiance and fought about whether a Republican lawmaker crossing the chamber to fetch a drink should have counted toward a quorum, allowing Democrats to pass more than 100 "noncontroversial" bills, which the state Assembly refuses to recognize. . . .

Unlike California, New York passed a budget by the start of its fiscal year, April 1. Still, the stalemate has not been without consequence. As of Wednesday, many cities lost authority to conduct routine operations, including issuing bonds, mailing tax notices and collecting certain operational fees.

As for the Big Apple, Steven Malanga advises Mayor Bloomberg on how to save his city. The mayor's approach, to slow the budget's rate of increase instead of actually cutting it, is not likely to meet with success. (See City Journal for more articles about NYC and New York this week.)

Many other states are in trouble. From the Seattle Times, 7/2/09:

Quote:

Ten states had not approved budgets for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Here are the states and the gaps they must plug to balance their budgets.

Arizona: $3.2 billion.

California: $24.3 billion

Connecticut: $8.8 billion

Delaware: $800 million

Illinois: $11.6 billion

Mississippi: $400 million

North Carolina: $4 billion

Ohio: $3.2 billion

Pennsylvania: $3.2 billion

Indiana: no budget gap; House and Senate are split on the budget amount

Toss in Colorado:

Quote:

“There is simply not enough money to pay for the government we have created,” the report says. “Barring a quick and dramatic turnaround of the economy, it appears that the current fiscal system cannot be sustained.”

Even Joe Biden isn't expecting a "quick and dramatic turnaround" at this point. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009...d-bad-economy/

Smart people can speculate on what might happen if three or four (or more) big states go under. Pundit said something about a domino effect. That doesn't sound good.

Comments welcome.

http://www.punditandpundette.com/200...e-straits.html

galeane29 · 07-07-2009, 08:53 AM

What is expected to happen to the states that go under? I'm not understanding what will change. I find it hard to believe that the Fed will not bail them out when they continuously bail out the stupid banks and car manufacturers.

whatever · 07-07-2009, 06:51 PM

How can Our fed. goverment help them. they can't even help themselves?
I mean Its like there is no end in sight at least with the spending spree still going.....