We know that Obama has given his Presidential campaign advisor an “expanded” White House role.  In addition to that, Obama, in a high profile manner, met with Congressional Republicans on Health Care and is reaching out to them on a jobs bill among other tactics.  In the face of such Clintonesque triangulation, the questions become:  What should the Republicans do?  Meet Obama half way?  Stonewall him?  Or offer their own agenda?  Given that the political handshake can often be the kiss of death, especially in a Tea Party World, Republicans need to go on the offensive by framing the debate if they are going to avoid Obama’s Bermuda Triangulation.

It is essential to note that whoever frames the election debate is the likely winner of the election. Democrats win elections by promoting what government can do in the face of adversity that they blame on capitalism or the market.  Republicans win elections by exposing the limits and detriments of government in addition to trumpeting the limitless values of freedom and the American spirit.

So, in 2008, when McCain promoted the government purchase of bad mortgages, that played into the hands of Democrats because it was a government response to a crisis – even though government caused the crisis.  In 1980, by contrast, Reagan persuaded Americans that government was the cause of our problems and that granting Americans more freedom from government, i.e. cutting taxes and regulations, was the solution.  In the first instance, the election was fought on the Democrat’s terms and the Democrats won.  In the second instance, the election was fought and won on Republican terms.

Viewed in that context, Obama’s job bill offers a mix of government responses, i.e. spending, and private incentives, i.e. tax credits.  It is a tough combination for Republicans to combat lest they be derided in the Media as the Party of No or obstructionist.

The only way for Republicans to effectively avoid such monikers is to take the rhetorical debate to the Democrats and Obama and not simply be in a responsive mode.  The political battlefield is simply ripe with opportunities for Republicans to do so.

For instance, Republicans must make the case that we have tried the Big Government way in 2009 and it has not worked.  Republicans shoudl cite the countless examples of government waste of the taxpayers’ money while unemployment has remained high.  For instance, $54 million in federal stimulus funds will be spent at the behest of U.S. Congressman Mike Thompson (D-CA) to pay for renovations of railroad track for a private “wine train” in Napa Valley.  The entire amount went to an Alaskan construction firm on a no-bid contract that will creat only 12 sustainable jobs – that’s $4.5 million per job!  If every American knew that, they would be loathe to give Obama’s government more money.

Republicans should go on the road and hold townhalls with small businesses owners around the country and demonstrate that $4.5 million could start at least 10 restaurants employing over 100 people in sustainable jobs – a dynamic which could be repeated over and over – if only we allowed Americans to keep their own money and fuel our recovery.

None of that can be achieved, however, if Republicans are simply in a reactive state to Obama’s proposals.  Republicans must take the rhetorical fight to the Democrats and frame the debate on terms on which Republicans can win.  Given Obama’s rehiring of campaign manager and his triangulating offers, Republicans obviously have no time waste if they are to win this most important debate of 2010.

It is true that there is a strong liberal majority in the House and Senate. However, that cannot be explained to the fact that this nation leans to the left. Moulitsas makes no mention to the fact that without Obama at the top of the ticket, conservatives have done very well. In the special runoff election a month after Obama was elected, Saxby Chambliss was elected with 57 percent of the vote, nearly 10 more percentage points then he had a month earlier in the general election. Or the stunning victory of Scot Brown in MA by 5 percentage points to win a seat that had been  inhabited by a Democrat for 47 years. He also pays no mention to the fact that Virginia, who has two Democrat Senators and voted for Obama in 2008, elected a strong conservative by a margin of 19 points in 2009. He also ignores the fact that in New Jersey they elected a Republican governor.

In the election of 2006 and 2008 voters wanted change, but they did not want the major change that the Obama administration is trying to achieve. Obama won the election by running on conservative ideals like cutting taxes and cutting spending.  In fact, Obama’s plan to tax people that made over $250,000 was a highly contested issue in the election. The American people did not vote a complete government takeover of health care.

According to Rasmussen, 75% of Americans are at least somewhat angry at the government’s current policies. That is a staggering number that should send a message that you cannot govern from the left, especially if you campaign from the right. If Markos truly believes that the Center-Right nation is a myth, he should look no further than the 9/12 March on Washington.

We are getting the same attitude on other issues, from global warming regulation, to taxes, government spending, deficits, federal debt, energy policy, welfare, corporate bailouts, and beyond.  Too many of our elected Members of Congress are making behind-closed-door deals and ignoring their constituents, calling them “yahoos,” “Nazis”,“and “tea-baggers.”

This isn’t American democracy — this is a shop-worn, elitist, authoritarianism closer to abuses we see in countries like Venezuela.

So, what would happen if the people could change this rotten situation?

Actually, there may just well be a mechanism within our political system to do so — the Right of Recall.  Nine states already have laws on the books providing for Recall of members of Congress: Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin.  These 9 states suffer 12 incumbent Senators who are members of the runaway Congressional majority, who are not already standing for reelection in 2010, but potentially could be.

For example, the New Jersey state constitution provides, “The people reserve unto themselves the power to recall, after at least one year of service, any elected official in this State or representing this State in the United States Congress.”

Tea party activists in New Jersey have already filed to circulate recall petitions regarding Sen. Robert Menendez.  Their recent Secretary of State took the position that such recall of members of Congress is not authorized under the U.S. Constitution.

Grassroots activists in Louisiana have similarly already filed for recall of Senator Mary Landrieu, and the circulation of recall petitions there has been authorized.

Exercising this existing statutory right of recall in these 9 states could potentially reverse the control in the Senate this year by placing 12 Senators not currently up for re-eectionion this year on their state ballots.  (For more information on this Right of Recall, see www.RecallCongressNow.org).

We have seen the recall process work in California in 2003 when citizens in that state, disgusted with recently reelected Democrat Governor, Gray Davis, voted overwhelmingly to remove him from office in a recall election.

Another nine states provide language in their constitutions to recall only state officials. The other states without recall provisions for members of Congress can change their laws to adopt it.  In states with the right to initiative, this can be done by a vote of the people after circulating petitions to put the change on the ballot.

Too many in Congress today are showing us that our representatives can no longer be trusted with 2-6 years in office without ongoing popular accountability.  Today’s Congressional majority is threatening to dump a load of bad legislation on the country despite the public’s opposition, daring us to try to “clean it up” later.  Only a Right of Recall can prevent such abuses in the future.

The Right of Recall would also help counter the growing problem of voter fraud.  If voters felt that an election were subject to too many irregularities in its conduct or in how the votes were counted, they could circulate Recall petitions for a new election.

Every state should adopt the Right of Recall to protect its voters.  The constitutionality of recalling members of Congress adopted under state law would ultimately have to be decided in the courts.  Or the people could definitively decide the issue themselves through voting to adopt a constitutional amendment, or by electing a Congress that would adopt a federal statute authorizing each state to adopt such a Right of Recall.

During Breitbart’s 33 minute long address, he threatens to upend the entire media establishment, calling them out on their hypocrisy while demanding they change their ways, or else.

The entire speech is available in this post and is broken down into four parts, but if you would like to view some of the highlights, you can click on any of the eight links below:

1. It’s You That Sucks!
2. You Better Bet Your Ass!
3. Just Add al-Qaida
4. MSM McCarthyism
5. Breitbart Challenges Soros
6. There Are More Tapes
7. The O’Keefe Arrest
8. Breitbart Issues An Ultimatum To The Media

Full Address Parts 1-4:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

You dance, delay, and deceive. You speak melodious words about seeking the wisdom of the public in making these decisions and then ignore evidence of the public will when you get it, or worse, you hide it.

First came the dance.  In August 2008, after soaring gas prices and a dramatic shift in public opinion caused President Bush, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, and Republican presidential candidate John McCain to reverse their positions on offshore drilling, then-Senator Obama also changed. The Democratic presidential nominee reversed his own position and that of his party, saying he was open to offshore drilling as part of an overall energy plan.  The Democratic Congress followed a month later by quietly dropping the 25-year Congressional ban on offshore drilling.

Then came the delay. In January 2009, President Obama inherited a draft five year offshore drilling plan prepared by the outgoing Bush administration.  The plan was already receiving public comment as part of the elaborate rule making process followed by federal agencies.  Ken Salazar, Obama’s new Secretary of Interior, determined the decision about new offshore drilling was so important that he ordered a six-month extension to the comment period.

Third comes the dishonesty.

In April of 2009, during a discussion about offshore exploration in San Francisco, Salazar said that President Obama directed him to “to make sure that we have an open and transparent government” and that “these are not decisions that are going to be made behind closed doors.” Salazar went on to say that President Obama wanted to make sure that DOI was “maximizing the opportunity for the public to give us guidance on what it is that they want to do.”

Yet, more than four months after the comment period ended, the Department of the Interior has failed to make any public announcement about the results, even though sources have told American Solutions for months the comments show a 2-1 advantage in support of offshore drilling.

It took American Solutions almost four months and the power of the Freedom of Information Act to finally uncover indirect confirmation that, out of over 530,000 comments submitted, pro-drilling comments outnumbered anti-drilling comments by a 2-1 margin.

In an email dated October 27, 2009, Liz Birnbaum, director of the Minerals Management Service, informs other Interior officials that a preliminary tabulation of the results of the comment period had not yet gone to Secretary Salazar, adding “[s]o the Secretary can honestly say in response to any questions that he’s [SIC] has not yet seen the analysis of the comments – staff is still working on it. I did, however, confirm to him the 2-1 split that these guys [at American Solutions] are emphasizing.”

When a public employee is on record condoning purposeful deception of the American people, the taxpayer should no longer have to fund his or her job.  Secretary Salazar should immediately fire Liz Birnbaum for purposefully deceiving him, and in turn, the American people.  It’s not possible for the Secretary to honor pledges of openness, honestly, and transparency in government if his staff is going to deliberately undermine such pledges.

Public opinion polls already measure near 70% support for offshore drilling, so the results from a public comment period that reflect the same public sentiment should not be surprising.  But after all this talk of wanting the public’s input, Secretary Salazar and his team must find it a real stumbling block to have to explain all their anti-energy development actions in light of the comment period results to which they previously attached such great importance.

This newly gained insight into the anti-energy exploration mindset within the Department of the Interior allows a new perspective of President Obama’s mention of offshore development in his recent State of the Union address.  Here is the one paragraph in which the President described offshore development:

But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.  It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development.  It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies.  And, yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.

To the passive listener, it sounded like President Obama expressed at least rhetorical support for offshore drilling.

But the President only says we must make “tough decisions” on offshore drilling, deliberately refusing to apply that standard to other decisions on energy.

But tough for whom? Certainly not for the public that overwhelmingly supports more offshore drilling.

Indeed, the only person facing a tough decision is the President since an important part of his political base is opposed to new American energy development.

Bucking public opinion would indeed be a tough decision for this President, but he has shown himself quite comfortable with bucking public opinion to pursue stunningly unpopular policies on health care and cap and trade.

In short, it’s a fair conclusion that the tough decisions the President identified in his State of the Union was his intended decision not to pursue any new offshore oil and gas development. The actions by Salazar and his team are entirely consistent with that conclusion.

What makes all of this dispiriting, especially this month, is that with 15 million Americans out of work and with the President’s recently submitted budget projecting trillion dollar annual deficits for the next ten years and a near tripling of the national debt by 2020, the President is throwing away a golden opportunity over the next three decades to create millions of new jobs and generate more than $270 billion in annual economic growth from new oil and gas development, including $54 billion annually in federal tax receipts that could help lower the federal deficit and the national debt.

These extraordinary benefits of job creation and economic growth – all without requiring any federal spending – are, sadly, not on President Obama’s agenda, notwithstanding all the phony rhetoric to the contrary.

Indeed, we can look forward to the President’s continued strategy of dance, delay, and deceive.

It’s a path, I believe, that runs contrary to our country’s original intent.  But Piven doesn’t think so.  In her book, “Challenging Authority,” she quoted both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

What I found most bizarre was the apparent disconnect in Piven’s mind between individual rights and property rights, particularly the idea of acquiring as much wealth as one wishes without fear of government encroachment. It’s impossible to believe that Jefferson, Adams and the other founders – most of them very successful entrepreneurs – could have envisioned or approved of a massive national government that siphons property and economic rights from private citizens.

The American Revolution they led was by no means a social revolution. It was a group of North American economic elites breaking away from an oppressive central authority in London. The leaders of the revolution had no interest in sharing their wealth with the masses. Most of them did not even favor extending the vote to common laborers.

It’s well documented that the founders were suspicious of a powerful central authority. That’s why they fought to rid themselves of King George III. That’s why they experimented for several years with a national confederation that had virtually no central government at all. They would be horrified at today’s progressive agenda, the very agenda Frances Fox Piven has been so successful at articulating and implementing for the last 40 years.

(Click on PLAY button and subscribe to podcast)

The Obama administration on Monday proposed a new agency to study and report on the changing climate.

Also known as global warming, climate change has drawn widespread concern in recent years as temperatures around the world rise, threatening to harm crops, spread disease, increase sea levels, change storm and drought patterns and cause polar melting.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, announced NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA’s National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.

“Whether we like it or not, climate change represents a real threat,” Locke said Monday at a news conference.

Lubchenco added, “Climate change is real, it’s happening now.” She said climate information is vital to the wind power industry, coastal community planning, fishermen and fishery managers, farmers and public health officials.

NOAA recently reported that the decade of 2000-2009 was the warmest on record worldwide; the previous warmest decade was the 1990s. Most atmospheric scientists believe that warming is largely due to human actions, adding gases to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.

Read the whole article here.

This bit of legerdemain is made possible, thanks to the convolutions of the personal income tax, by adopting or expanding refundable tax credits. But in this case, “refundable” does not mean the government is returning money to taxpayers. Instead, it means that money is being redistributed to people who do not earn enough to be subject to the income tax.

This is hardly a trivial issue. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the amount of income redistribution being laundered through the tax code is now so large that the bottom 40 percent of the population has a negative “effective” income tax rate. In simple terms (though perhaps with profound political implications), the income tax is a revenue generator for a big share of the population.

And the problem is going to get worse if the President’s budget is approved. Buried in the fine print, on pages 188-189 of the Analytical Perspective of the Budget, you will see that the President is proposing to increase this hidden form of spending by more than $152 billion over the next ten years.

It is worth noting that proponents argue that it is okay to classify this new spending as tax cuts because it somehow offsets other tax payments, especially the payroll tax. I’m sympathetic to lower taxes on everybody, including the poor, but surely it is better to be honest and simply cut the taxes that people pay. The current methodology, by contrast, is open to abuse. Heck, I’m surprised politicians don’t classify other forms of spending as tax cuts. Maybe corporate welfare can be reclassified as a corporate tax cut (I better stop lest I give the political class any ideas).

Defenders also assert that some so-called refundable tax credits, particularly the earned income tax credit, are designed to encourage work. That is partly true, but credits like the EITC are withdrawn as income climbs, and this means poor people face punitive marginal tax rates, so the overall effect on hours worked may be negligible.

The right approach, of course, is to get the federal government out of the racket of redistributing income. And without “refundable” tax credits, it would be easier to adopt real tax reform, such as a flat tax or national sales tax.

Spokesman for Rep. John Murtha says the Pennsylvania Democrat has died at 77.

ED Note: Rep. Murtha was a close political ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He was her choice for Majority Leader, but he was edged out in a caucus-wide vote by Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD). He became a darling of the on-line left as a fierce critic of the Iraq War. For many conservatives, he was a personification of the Congressional earmark system and its potential for abuse. His final months in office were marked by serious questions surrounding his steering of millions of dollars in Pentagon appropriations.

Consider this an open thread.

Zaid Shakir – Final from The Claremont Conservative on Vimeo.

For those wondering who Mr. Shakir is, he’s the go-to expert on Islamic issues for the mainstream media. The New York Times describes him as a “leading intellectual light,” while rap scholar, Cornel West says “he is one of the towering principle [sic] voices not only in contemporary Islam, but in American society,” according to this biography.   Most recently, he was described by John Esposito as one of the “500 Most Influential Muslims.”

After comparing the massacres at Ft. Hood by Major Nidal Hassan to the Columbine killers and Maurice Clemmons, of Mike Huckabee pardon fame, Shakir said that the violence we have seen was not a “Muslim problem,” but a problem for everyone. You never quite know when someone will “snap.” [The following is extracted from a transcript from audio I took of the public lecture at my college.]

There is not a Muslim problem. Especially based on the number of Muslims who have done this particular act. It’s not a Korean problem because the kid in Virginia tech was a Korean American. It’s not a white American problem because the kids in Columbine or several other places were white Americans. That’s not the common denominator, race is not the common denominator, religion is not the common denominator, gender–maybe, I would say they should just chill out. What is the common denominator. The common denominator is easy access to guns. The common denominator is that there are more guns in America than there are human beings. There are more guns in America than human beings, and they are easily had. And if someone tries to limit their accessibility, they’re going to be challenged by the NRA, the National Rifle Association–one of the most powerful lobbies in this country. That’s the common denominator. So if we are serious as a society about stopping this violence, it doesn’t behoove us to demonize Muslims. We’re here to talk about Muslims, I’m not trying to dodge that, but if behooves us to make it far, far, far more difficult for people to get their hands on a gun. And if we’re not willing to do that, it’s easy to go blame the Muslims. That’s easy and that’s why so many people do–it’s a national sport. Vilify the Muslims, they’re weak, they can’t fight back.

Of course left unsaid is why we should ban guns on a military base. Shouldn’t Major Hassan, a U.S. Army officer, be carrying a gun on such a military base? And what of the quick thinking of the law enforcement personnel on the scene who were well armed?

But “the violence that permeates our society spills over to other shores,” Zaid said. To prove his point, Shakir totally misrepresented history, claiming for instance that “the last time any Muslim country encroached upon a Christian country” was “300 years ago, the second Ottoman siege of Vienna,” and utterly ignoring the Armenian genocide or the civil war in Lebanon, to name just two quick examples.

He claimed, among other things that the American invasion and occupation was to blame for the hostility between Shiites and Sunnis – ignoring that the Battle of Karbala between Sunnis and Shiites, occurred in Iraq some centuries ago. And while violence between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq was rare before 1991, that was only because Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated Baath party kept its hands tightly on the reigns of power.

In addition, Zaid referenced the infiltration by the FBI of a Muslim mosque in Irvine, CA – trying to “whip up people.” He advised Muslims to resist those “agent provocateurs” “infiltrating our community and our mosques, try to provoke us to harm our fellow citizens in any way,” but left out that the FBI uncovered a plot to bomb buildings and arrested one man, Ahmadullah Niaza, for concealing his connections to al-Qaeda on naturalization papers. Maybe the reason the FBI infiltrated the Irvine mosques was their jihadi connections?

But this narrative of being infiltrated fit in with his view that Muslims are the victims of an increasingly hateful American society. Incredibly and without evidence, he said, that if you “turn on the radio, there are people actually saying, ‘Go kill some Muslims. One of them killed some of us, go kill, you see a Muslim, just shoot him.’ On the radio!”

He continued,

You can say things about Muslims you can’t say about any other group. [mimicking someone with objections ]“Oh, that’s not true.” You can’t go on the radio, public air space, regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, and say “We should go out and kill group A, group B, group C.” You can say it to Muslims, no one will say anything. No one will say anything. You could print it, no one will say anything. Muslims are the enemy after all. So Muslims who are just minding their business, trying to make a good life, raise their children, go to work every day and hear that? What should you do? Well (inaudible), you should patiently persevere in doing the good things you are doing.

It’s an interesting narrative, but this “nation born in genocide,” didn’t go after Muslims after Fort Hood, despite the articles fearing a “backlash.”  Maybe, just maybe, the land of the free is a good place for Muslims, after all, notwithstanding Shakir’s attempts to deflect the very real threat of Muslim violence against America.

But don’t take my word for it. Listen to Imam Shakir in his own words in the video above or read the transcript below.

Zaid Shakir Transcript-1 –

ACORN and other left-wing advocacy groups could be eligible for up to $3.99 billion in federal funding included in the $3.83 trillion fiscal 2011 budget blueprint that President Obama unveiled last week.

ACORN and other left-wing advocacy groups could be eligible for up to $3.99 billion in federal funding included in the $3.83 trillion fiscal 2011 budget blueprint that President Obama unveiled last week.

The $3.99 billion comes from a congressional slush fund known as the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, which is part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) $48.5 billion fiscal 2011 budget. CDBG grants, which are awarded to states and localities, pass indirectly to ACORN.

How is more funding of ACORN possible when Congress passed a ban on funding the group and its affiliates just last year?

Congress has already hinted it might vote to restore funding to ACORN. On Dec. 8 the House Appropriations Committee rejected on a party line vote of 9 to 5 an amendment offered by Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa) that would have blocked federal funding of ACORN.

And in December federal Judge Nina Gershon restored federal funding of ACORN by issuing a temporary injunction against the congressional funding ban. The Brooklyn-based Gershon, a Bill Clinton appointee, determined that depriving ACORN of taxpayer dollars was an unconstitutional “bill of attainder” that singled out ACORN for punishment without trial.

You might be familiar with Gershon’s oeuvre. In 1999 she ruled then-New York mayor Rudy Giuliani had no right to cut off city funding of the Brooklyn Museum of Art when it displayed dead animals and a painting of the Virgin Mary decorated with elephant dung.

Gershon’s order covered the federal government’s temporary spending legislation that expired Dec. 18 but ACORN is asking that the injunction be modified to cover the remainder of fiscal 2010, which ends Sept. 30. If the litigation drags on, ACORN will undoubtedly seek another modification to cover fiscal 2011.

Read the whole article here.

Slate’s Jacob Weisberg came unhinged on Friday and gave the country the finger.

“Down with the People!” he screams from Bill Gates lap.  As Jacob sees it, we the people are demanding two mutually exclusive things: premium government services and tax cuts, and when we can’t have what we want, we become unruly children.

There is of course a third option, and I think it is the voting issue for the 2010 elections.  It frankly amazes me that TPM-style Democrats going after Paul Ryan’s Roadmap, don’t see it coming…

You can thank me later, but I just saved the United State of America at least  $278,309,600,000.00 PER YEAR. You read that right.  $278 BILLION per year.  That’s almost entirely what Medicaid will spend this year for children and the disabled.  That’s what our normal deficit looks like without TARP and stimulus.

The crazy thing is how easy it was to do.   It took me like three minutes.  And since I’m a big open source, creative commons guy I’m even posting my magical formula shown here using 2008’s budget:

(1,391,548 1,000,000)*.2

Somebody start printing bumper stickers baby, so everyone can see how much we save when we cut federal, state, and local public employee pay by 20%.*

Amazing isn’t it?  And Obama, Weisberg, and SEIU are out of their friggin minds if they think 20% government pay cuts aren’t on the table come next November. What are they going to do?  Quit?  Strike?  Bring it on.  Newt’s 1994 revolution will look uneventful by comparison. We call them civil “servants,” for a reason.

We don’t need to be politically delicate about this,  we aren’t advocating a single program cut, no school closed, no park uncleaned, no fireman not coming to save you.  All of that will continue to happen.

But the government employees doing all this marvelous stuff for us are going to earn 20% less…. and from now on their future pay increases will be tied to private wage inflation.  Our country is in deep financial straits, and it is time for government workers to share our pain and get their interests aligned with ours.  They’ll make more money when we do.

Yes, there are further budget issues we face, entitlements must be humanely reigned in, but before we can seriously look at future debt projections, we must first return sanity to the public labor market.  Until we cut government pay down to size, we can’t honestly talk about which programs to fund…. because right now they all cost too much.

Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats should refuse to deal with any other issue, until this one is fixed.  They should make Senator Shelby’s 70 holds seem a trifle.  Want a jobs bill?  Let’s fix government pay, so main street can have a tax cut.  $278 BILLION as small business tax relief at the federal, state, and local level is one hell of a jobs program.  Real jobs.  The kind that don’t have the dirty taint of government on them.

China will LOVE us.  Wall Street will soar.  It will be serious proof Washington DC has been cracked to the core.  It will be morning in America.

I can’t imagine a single Indie voter not rushing to the voting booth on this one.  Politicians courting the tea party, listen up, this gets completely around the false choice the left wants the voters to have to make.  Instantly, the debate changes.

*of course, Josh Marshall, there will be no military cuts. Minus military wages, the Bureau of Economic Analysis places government compensation in 2008, at $1,391,548,000,000.00

In this, as in many other things, California leads the nation, for better or for worse (repaying the money borrowed for President Obama’s Stimulus will cost every American $280 a month for life).

Some people place a portion of California’s debt problem at the feet of voters who approve nearly every bond initiative, from $3 billion for an embryonic stem cell research bond to $10 billion in debt to build a high-speed rail system.

It’s hard to blame citizens of the Golden State for voting for debt when the most famous Californian, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, proclaims bonds “a gift from the future.”  It’s also hard to blame voters for approving bonds when the bond ballot descriptions and arguments are chock full of shaky claims.

Take November 2008’s much promoted High-Speed Rail Initiative, Proposition 1A.  Voters approved it by 52-48 after proponents, such as train manufacturers and unions poured $2.5 million into the effort.  As with almost every bond measure, there was no funded opposition.  The measure’s proponents, big business and labor unions, claimed that the trains would offer time-saving travel “AT A CHEAPER COST!” than air travel or car.  And that, the train would, “give Californians a real alternative to skyrocketing gasoline prices and dependence on foreign oil while reducing greenhouse gases. Building high-speed rail is cheaper than expanding highways and airports to meet California’s population growth.”

Really?  Who checks these claims?

A widely read California columnist recently noted that the cost estimates for the fast train were rapidly unraveling only 18 months after the vote.  According to the signed ballot argument train fares were sold to voters as going for “about $50 a person” for a ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco.  Now the estimated cost for that same train ticket has soared to $105.  The doubled cost to riders has tanked train ridership estimates by one-third.

An additional report from the San Jose Mercury News revealed that the train’s crucial ridership numbers were based on an unpublished study rather than the disclosed peer reviewed documents.  A High Speed Rail Authority internal memo indicates the public employees deliberately withheld the final assumptions, presumably to ease passage of the controversial bond initiative.  (A trick learned from the Global Warming community, perhaps?)

Meanwhile, as the state teeters on insolvency, the repayment cost is still anticipated by the High-Speed Rail Authority to hit $647 million annually, an estimate that lacks even a basic level of credibility as California’s bond interest rates are expected to soar as they reach junk status.

I was pleased to author the arguments against Proposition 1A, along with Tom McClintock, then a Senator, now a Congressman, Senator George Runner, Jon Coupal, President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, and others.  We wrote that repaying the bond would cost $20 billion; or about $2,000 for each California family of four over the life of the bond.  If California’s bonds go to junk status, the annual repayment cost would escalate to more than $960 million per year, taking an additional $1,000 bite out of the typical California family’s budget over 30 years.

Further, the bond repayment costs will be in addition to a heavy yearly subsidy from state taxpayers to keep the train from operating in the red.  This train subsidy will take scarce tax funds from road and highway construction, as well as such mundane things as buses for urban mass transit.

California is tapped out.  We can borrow no more.  The question is, will voters realize this and start to hold on tight to their wallets in future elections?

As for the rest of America, look to California and take careful notice: incurring mountains of debt without the ability to reliably repay it comes at a high cost.  Out of control debt encumbers future generations with crushing repayment obligations – essentially subjecting America’s youth to taxation without representation while consigning them to a life with a lower standard of living than their parents and grandparents.