Big Government

The Shooting in Tucson

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I have had a house in Tucson for the past five or six years. It is in Gabriel Gifford’s Congressional district. I know the corner of Ina Road and Oracle Road where the shooting occurred. I know and like Tucson and Arizona. I would rather be living there than here because I have serious fears about California’s future while I think Arizona is now in pretty good hands. They had a housing bubble but they have more sensible people in that state government.

Gabriel Gifford’s district includes some of the most affluent areas of Tucson. To be re-elected, she had to be a “blue dog” Democrat. She has an appealing personal story. Her father is a sheriff of a neighboring county and her husband is an astronaut. I would not have voted for her because she had a very attractive opponent but there was very little of the animosity in that election that there was in other district races. Some of her constituents were unhappy about her healthcare vote. She had gotten the message and voted against Nancy Pelosi for minority leader of the Democrats, one of 17 Democrats to do so.

The press conference by the Pima County sheriff yesterday was disgraceful. I watched the whole thing. He went over and over his theories that harsh political discourse was somehow a cause of the shooting. He repeated the whole mantra three times by my count. Other than that, he provided very little information, for example, declining to give the suspect’s name when everyone with an internet connection knew what it was. I think he may have been reacting to personal distress as he probably knows Ms Gifford’s father and has known her for a long time. I also suspect he is a Democrat as Tucson is a rather left wing city being the site of the University of Arizona. The City Council has been very left wing and several members were defeated in the previous election as they had spent far too much money on frivolous projects, some of which had never been completed.

There is a lot of wild talk on left wing web sites, some of which is being rolled back as Daily Kos and the DNC scrub web sites of similar images and rhetoric as conservative sites and people they are attacking. A lot of it has been scrubbed but some people have found Google caches.

Like this DLC “targeting map.”

There has been a lot of talk about how “angry” Arizona people are. Well, maybe they have reason to be angry. The Obama administration has sued the state to try to stop an Arizona law that merely enforces a federal law that Obama seems disinterested in enforcing. Arizona is overrun with illegals immigrants, drug violence is 60 miles away in Mexico and auto insurance rates are sky high because of car theft. Someone I know had a LoJack system installed in his car. When he realized the car was stolen, the police activated the locator and the car was already 60 miles into Mexico.

Some of the angry rhetoric comes from a sense that the people have lost control of the government since Obama was elected. The health care bill was opposed in every poll of public opinion. The Republican minority was completely opposed. Yet, the bill was passed by procedural maneuvers never before used to pass legislation of this magnitude. As the people have learned more about the bill, they like it less. Nancy Pelosi told us they have to pass it so we can find out what is in it. Yes, the people of Arizona are angry. But it had nothing to do with yesterday’s shooting.

The young man is obviously a paranoid schizophrenic. His ramblings on a You Tube video contain the typical delusions of schizophrenics. He goes on about the government controlling minds through grammar. He appears to be obsessed with grammar and goes on about introducing a new currency for which he will be the Treasurer. These are the delusional ravings of a psychotic. There appears to be some level of disappointment that he is not associated with a political ideology, especially the tea party. There are already think pieces about “violence”, by which they mean talk radio and Fox News, just as Clinton did after the McVeigh bombing in Oklahoma.

By day’s end, the argument that the political right—fueled by anti-government, and anti-immigrant passions that run especially strong in Arizona—is culpable for the Tucson massacre, even if by indirect association, seemed to be validated by the top local law enforcement official investigating the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D).

This refers to that disgusting press conference by the Pima County sheriff. They even have a video of his rant.

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, an elected Democrat, at a news conference Saturday evening.

Yup, I guessed right.

One veteran Democratic operative, who blames overheated rhetoric for the shooting, said President Barack Obama should carefully but forcefully do what his predecessor did.

“They need to deftly pin this on the tea partiers,” said the Democrat. “Just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people.”

Another Democratic strategist said the similarity is that Tucson and Oklahoma City both “take place in a climate of bitter and virulent rhetoric against the government and Democrats.”

Isn’t it odd that movies about the assassination of George Bush are not considered too extreme ?

I think Representative Gifford will recover as the gunshot wound track passed from her temple out her forehead, probably missing her brain. A family friend said she is now in induced coma, no doubt to minimize cerebral edema from the contusion to the brain from the shock wave. I don’t know if the Democratic party will recover from its disinterest in debate and its tendency to try to demonize its opponents instead of argue with them.

“An 83% Tax Hike? Make Democrats Own It.”

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This is madness … . This is Illinois!

Last year, during my gubernatorial primary race, I frequently referenced a Cook County company with 160 employees whose CPA told them that they would add $750,000 to their bottom line by moving 35 miles away to Valparaiso, IN.
 
On the four borders of Illinois, every business is doing a similar calculation and coming to the same conclusion. The Illinois Democrats hate the private sector.

Adam Andrzejewski, at his site For The Good of Illinois.

You work 50 weeks a year if you are fortunate enough to be employed. Each week is 2% of your working year. Adding a tax of 2.25% means you will be working one more week per year for the government of Illinois. The government of Illinois is legendarily opaque, corrupt and wasteful. Giving it more money makes no sense. It does not deserve more money from the taxpayers. Destroying the competitiveness of Illinois even further is a terrible idea. Putting a tax increase onto Illinois businesses and citizens during a deep recession is an insane idea.

The GOP squandered a chance to make Illinois part of a national wave last year, so this tax increase is almost certainly going to happen. Nonetheless, the GOP should, at least, oppose this destructive tax increase.

If you are an Illinois taxpayer, please contact your representative and make your opinion known.

(And be happy. It makes you more resilient for the long term to be happy.)

UPDATE: I called, and was treated very courteously, and let my State Senator and State Rep. know that I oppose the tax increase. If you live in Illinois, please do the same.

UPDATE II: Here is a petition against the tax hike.

UPDATE III: Six Springfield Republicans are reported to be leaning toward voting yes on state income tax increase! If you live in one of these districts PLEASE call and give notice that you are a voter and you oppose any Illinois tax increase.

St. Sen. Larry K. Bomke (R-50, Springfield )- Phone: (217) 782-0228
St. Sen. Dale E. Risinger (R-37, Peoria )- Phone: (217) 782-1942
St. Rep. Bob Biggins (R-41, Elmhurst )- Phone: (217) 782-6578
St. Rep. Dave Winters (R-68, Rockford )- Phone: (217) 782-0455
St. Rep. Ronald A. Wait (R-69, Belvidere )- Phone: (217) 782-0548
St. Rep. Roger L. Eddy (R-109, Hutsonville)- Phone: (217) 558-1040

UPDATE IV: Noon. Saturday. They have not yet voted. They are going to vote on Sunday. There is still time to call your Senator or Representative.

Imagine no School Districts

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I put up a post titled “What If” over at Heartland’s blog site.

One minute I think we’re going to win this over the next few years, and another minute, I think there’s no hope. But a man can dream.

Quotes of the Day

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Victor Davis Hanson (at around 14:00):

What Thomas Friedman would need to do is get on a bicycle and go across rural China, and then compare that with biking across Nebraska, and see which society is more resilient and stable.

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Ann Althouse:

Well, you will pull the plug on grandma, but only after grandma has signed the document the doctor explained to her long before she got into the situation she’s in now, back when it seemed like autonomy and control.

“Using unwanted procedures in terminal illness is a form of assault,” [said Dr. Donald M. Berwick, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service].

The question is what do patients want and how what they want will be determined. It seems to me that the effort is to get people to commit in advance to death-hastening choices, by getting everyone to sign these documents. Now, all the new regulation seems to do is to authorize Medicare reimbursements for the time health care professionals spend counseling patients about the value and importance of signing the document. It’s hard to see what’s wrong with that. If treatments are covered but advice about forgoing treatment is not covered, then there’s an incentive to do expensive things.

In a recent study of 3,700 people near the end of life, Dr. Maria J. Silveira of the University of Michigan found that many had “treatable, life-threatening conditions” but lacked decision-making capacity in their final days. With the new Medicare coverage, doctors can learn a patient’s wishes before a crisis occurs.

Treatable? You have a condition that can be treated, but you can’t think well enough anymore to decide whether you’d prefer to die? If you’ve signed the document, the answer is you’d rather let the condition kill you, because you allowed the doctors to “learn [your] wishes before” this “crisis” occurred. You didn’t know what the crisis would be or how you would feel when it happened, but you had “wishes” then and these will be taken as your “wishes” now.

(Many of the comments are also worth reading, particularly the one by Bender at 10:21 AM on 12/26/10 and the one by Ann Althouse at 2:21 PM on 12/26/10.)

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Oleg Atbashian:

* Why do those who object to tampering with the environment approve of tampering with the economy? Isn’t the economy also a fragile ecosystem where a sudden change can trigger a devastating chain reaction?
* Isn’t the latest economic crisis such a chain reaction?
* Aren’t most of today’s social ills the result of tampering with social ecosystems?
* Why is bioengineering bad, but social engineering good?

 

How It Ends

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WIND POWER AND SPAIN

Alternative power (wind & solar, primarily) survives because of subsidies that make it competitive with the traditional “base load” power sources of nuclear, coal, natural gas and hydroelectric power. These subsidies have to be passed on, in some form or another, to either the end user that pays the power bill or the taxpayer who funds it on behalf of all citizens.

Spain, in particular, offered incentives that led to a large investment in wind power facilities. Spain was viewed as a “model” country for alternative power by greens as a result of these policies.

Today’s WSJ had an article titled “Spain’s Cuts to Solar Aid Draw Fire” that summarized the situation:

In Spain, solar-PV plants (cost) roughly 10 times the price utilities pay for power produced from conventional sources such as gas and coal.

Since Spain is having financial problems, these subsidies are expected to be significantly reduced, by up to 30%. The developers of these wind farms are crying foul, saying that Spain is reneging on its commitments and offering up a form of the “expropriation” argument that often occurs over power investments of this type.

20 billion Euros had been invested in the solar-PV plants in Spain… the tariff changes could force many solar producers in default on their debts.

It is interesting that debt-holders assumed that citizens would want to pay ten times the rate of coal and gas power for “clean” wind power indefinitely. It doesn’t seem like a bet that is going to pay off for them.

GOVERNMENT PENSIONS

Another infeasible and indefensible scheme is also beginning to show cracks towards its inevitable collapse. This article describes the situation in the city of Prichard, Alabama.

The financially troubled suburb of Mobile turned to bankruptcy court… when it simply ran out of money to meet pension obligations… Prichard proposed capping benefits to current retirees at $200 a month, down from monthly payments as much as $3,000.

The obligations of many, many municipalities are unsustainable. Prior politicians promised benefits that can’t be paid without seriously reducing and impairing existing services. The type of “haircut” that Prichard was proposing seems very onerous but they have to pay for existing salaries and benefits and then the costs of the retired staffing on top of it is apparently impossible.

At some point a new generation of politician will come into office and have to make the choice of either 1) raising taxes to unsustainable levels (and thus being thrown out of office) to pay for past pension promises 2) find a way to get out of the promises by either going bankrupt or somehow “cramming down” smaller payments.

It is a good bet that many of the politicians will balk at raising taxes and seriously look at bankruptcy or some other way to reduce these costs simply because raising taxes during a recession when citizens are hard up is political suicide. The same forces (conflict avoidance, pandering) that allowed unions to amass such favorable terms while the fiction of pensions and 10% returns on investments compounded forever existed works exactly in reverse when the situation becomes dire; why would the politician try to sacrifice everything (including current workers) for past worker pensions and health benefits?

In both these cases the fictions that citizens are willing to bear higher than market costs indefinitely for alternative power or to pay for lifetime pensions for people retiring in their 50’s is going to founder, and these consequences will ripple through the entire financial and governmental sector.

This is how it ends.

Cross posted at LITGM