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(Welcome to California!)

With the current state of eternal/ongoing financial crisis in California, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit the day where things went south. On June 8, 1978; the day after the election and the "voters revolt", California was poised to go from budget surplus to bankruptcy in a very short time.

Gov. Brown: “The message is, that the Property Tax must be sharply curtailed and that government spending, wherever it is, must be held in check. We must look forward to lean and frugal budgets.”

Lots of people forget just how this thing got started, since it was 31 years ago - time has a tendency to cloud things over, particularly events that seemed like a good idea at the time, but over the long haul just spelled disaster.

So in case you were wondering . . .

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September 28, 2009 News Corp

Heather: Bobby Jindal recites Frank Luntz's talking points on health care reform.

CAVUTO: Well, the push for the public option is gaining a lot of steam. Two top Democrats are pressing to make sure that the Senate bill includes a government-run plan. The Finance Committee is expected to vote on it tomorrow.

My next guest says that public option will kill lots of private sector jobs, and he`s got a plan that will not.

Bobby Jindal is the Republican governor of Louisiana.

Governor, always good to have you. Thanks for coming.

JINDAL: Neil, thank you for having me.

CAVUTO: All right. Now, a lot of folks are concerned that this public option ultimately becomes the only option and ultimately means the government is running everything.

You have an alternative. What is it?

JINDAL: Absolutely. Well, let`s start first of all -- Neil, across this country, I think the debate`s over. I think the American people have spoken loudly. they have said they don`t want a government- run plan that increases their taxes, that increases government spending.

Across the country, our people are worried that government is spending too much money. Only in Washington, D. C. , would they respond by creating a plan that could spend $900 billion more dollars.

Across the country, people are worried about jobs and the economy, and the greatest recession since the Great Depression. Only in Washington, would they respond by saying let`s raise taxes on employers and families.

Across the country, our people are worried about the rising cost of health care, the inaffordability of health care. Only in Washington would they respond by proposing taxes on health insurance, on medical devices, on -- on medical products.

Look, the reality is, the American people don`t want this big Pelosi plan that government take over our health care. But there is an opportunity to get bipartisan reforms done.

Nobody is defending the status quo. As Republicans, we can`t just be the party of no. There`s several things -- if they would scrap these massive government plans, there`s several things we could agree on in a bipartisan way.

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David Sirota takes on Florida GOP Chairman and Obama school speech fear monger Jim Greer on Don Lemon's weekend show on CNN. This time the topic is the collective freak out by people at these Tea Bag protests now that the scary black man has been elected.

Sirota asks Greer where the protests were when Bush was trampling all over our constitution and running up the deficit and you've just got to love Greer's response here -- deflect and denial.

First Greer cites Bush's terrible poll numbers and tries to conflate the protests going on now to the people protesting the Iraq War, who as Sirota correctly points out were completely different protesters and not the people taking to the streets now.

After admitting that they are different people Greer tries to paint the Tea Baggers as just every day Americans from all political walks of life, and not the fringe right of the conservative movement.

Then Greer tries to pretend that race isn't part of the problem with these protesters, which Don Lemon calls him out for.

LEMON: David, what's happening here?

SIROTA: Well, again, I think that there's a segment of the population that does not want to accept President Obama as a legitimate president. And I think that you can tell that this is really a partisan lynch mob by understanding that these people were not out making the exact same criticism of President Bush. Where were the people who were worried about the constitution when President Bush trampled the constitution with the Patriot Act? Where were these people talking about government spending when President Bush inflated the deficit to record proportions?

LEMON: Jim, that's a good question.

SIROTA: Where were they?

GREER: Well, I think you saw where they were when the polls showed that unfortunately from a Republican standpoint, President Bush was down in the 20s. I mean, the American public -

SIROTA: Where were the protests?

GREER: Well, you know, there were people protesting President Bush because I saw them quite often as I traveled the country.

SIROTA: Do you think conservative tea partiers are protesting --

LEMON: I do have to say no that people did protest the Iraq war. I saw a lot of that. I covered a lot of it.

GREER: A lot of that.

LEMON: People said they had pictures of President Bush. They hung things of him in effigy. They put it in on fire, lit them on fire. So there were things, but they were protesting a war, and that they were looking for evidence that never turned up. So it's kind of a different thing, but he was protested.

SIROTA: Those are different protesters.

GREER: Where we are today --

Well, they may be different protesters, but you asked me, where were they? And there were people protesting President Bush. Where we are today, Don, David, is that this administration has tried to radically change the role of government in our daily lives and the role of government in major industries that have made this country great. And that is why Americans, not just Republicans, but Americans are frustrated. They can't get answers to their questions. They're concerned about President Obama's views of what America should look like today and what it will look like in the future. And they just reject that. And they're angry. They're frustrated because it's not the America that they brought up to have great respect for, and they're concerned.

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Marsha Blackburn who never had a problem with George Bush's wars and spending at the Tea Bag 9/12 protest in Washington D.C. saying the protesters want some fiscal responsibility. That's rich. And they want their "country back". From who exactly Marsha? Their elected representatives, or from the black man they think was born in Kenya?

Gotta' love Fox for staying classy with the "Don't Barney Frank Me" sign they were showing while they were interviewing her.

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(Deja-vu all over again)

An interesting panel discussion between Senators Estes Kefauver (D-Tennessee), Margaret Chase Smith (R-Main), Blair Moody (D-Michigan) and Harry P. Cain (R-Washington) on the subject "How Can We Get Integrity In Government?" in 1952. I'm struck by the civility of everyone for about the first half before it goes slightly south.

Funny, in almost 60 years the argument is the same, so is the hand-wringing and finger pointing. The other side is always the culprit and everything would be solved if there was a new party running things.

Sadly, no.

I hate to sound cynical, but in 60 years the corruption and lobbying has only gotten worse. Certainly the hypocrisy has.

But I just have the feeling our "trusted public servants" in 1952 weren't going MIA for jaunts to Buenos Aires - or maybe they were and they were more discreet.

At least this bunch doing the panel in 1952 pretended to be.

For the life of me, I can't figure out California government. The state appears to be dominated by Democrats, yet the state government seems to take its plays right out of the right-wing Club for Growth playbook. And the proposition program seems like a recipe for disaster! I can't even tell who the good guys are:

Reporting from Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers scrambled Wednesday to avert a financial meltdown, and public officials across California braced for annihilating cuts on the day after voters trounced their leaders' rescue plan for the state.

Within two hours of returning from Washington, D.C., the governor huddled behind closed doors with Democratic and Republican legislative leaders to grapple with a projected $21.3-billion budget shortfall for the coming fiscal year and stop state government from running out of money by July.

But the Republican governor delivered at least a bit of good news: Obama administration officials had backed off their threat to rescind $6.8 billion in federal stimulus money.

The hacking of government began quickly, by the hand of a little-known state panel that sets elected state officials' pay. Citing a need for shared sacrifice, the group decided to reduce those salaries by 18% starting next year.

Otherwise, on a bright, clear morning in the capital, the most certain thing was the dark and angry mood of the voters. They had overwhelmingly rejected a package of ballot measures intended to produce about $6 billion through the middle of next year with taxes, borrowing and other means; limit future government spending; and bolster the state's rainy day fund.

Only a measure to punish elected officials by denying them pay raises in deficit years won approval -- easily.

Schwarzenegger, who alienated himself from fellow Republicans in February by reversing his pledge not to raise taxes, took the results as a mandate for the plan he unveiled last week to slash billions from education, healthcare, law enforcement and social programs, and to borrow $2 billion from local governments.

Oops.

Of all the charges levied during the debate over the economic stimulus package, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) offered one of the most foolish. In a widely-panned national address, Jindal complained bitterly about "wasteful spending," and to prove his point, highlighted "$140 million for something called 'volcano monitoring.'"

Even at the time, it was an unusually foolish thing to say. A month later, Jindal's complaints look even worse.

An erupting Mount Redoubt exploded again at 4:31 this morning -- its fifth and strongest discharge yet -- sending an ash cloud to new heights, the Alaska Volcano Observatory reported.

Ash has now been detected at 60,000 feet above sea level, the National Weather Service reported.

The AP added, "Ash from Alaska's volcanoes is like a rock fragment with jagged edges and has been used as an industrial abrasive. It can injure skin, eyes and breathing passages. The young, the elderly and people with respiratory problems are especially susceptible to ash-related health problems. Ash can also cause damage engines in planes, cars and other vehicles."

A USGS geologist confirmed to Zachary Roth that "a portion of the stimulus spending for volcano monitoring that Jindal lampooned has been slated to go to USGS monitoring Redoubt."

Chris Waythomas, a geologist with the Alaska Volcano Observatory, a branch of the USGS, said that part of the money from the stimulus that Jindal was referring to would have been used to "shore up" monitoring of Redoubt, by adding new monitoring technology like real-time GPS. Redoubt, he said, was "very high on our list" of volcanoes that needed increased scrutiny.

In fact, it's so important that the presumably ash-covered Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, has hedged her bets and indicated that she would be open to saying "No thanks, but THANKS" to federal stimulus money.

Dave N.: I suggest we rename it Mount Jindal. Just so it can stand as a permanent, smoking reminder of the consequences of Republican governance.

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From Larry King Live Nov. 25, 2008 while discussing the potential stimulus package Obama is proposing, Bay Buchanan suddenly finds religion on government waste, cronyism and corruption.

This Republican cheerleader suddenly doesn't like that these things might go on when she sat silent about them all through the Bush administration. Bay, where were you at while they were playing football with pallets full of our money in Iraq and while Halliburton was blowing up $70,000 trucks at cost plus to our government? Where were you when they were giving no bid contracts for Gulf Coast reconstruction and they used about ten middle men in the process before finally hiring some illegal alien to do the actual work and stealing our tax dollars?

I could go on, and I'm sure the readers here can give a longer list of the things that Republicans have ignored while Bush was in charge of the theft of our tax dollars. To see the feigned outrage from those who cheered Bush along the entire way now that we're in a mess of Bush's making so huge it's hard to imagine how we'll come out of it is nothing short of infuriating. Bay, you're a day late and way more than a dollar short.

From The Onion:

With the economy sliding deeper into a recession, panelists discuss whether it's time to stop throwing our money into a massive pit out in the desert.

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Oh, the gaffe-a-minute, never-vet-any-campaign-speech joy of the McCain campaign. Sarah Palin debuted both a new set of glasses and a new talking point about the way that the McCain/Palin administration will be smarter about the way government funds important programs:

Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? [snip] You've heard about some of these pet projects they really don't make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.

Apparently, Palin isn't aware of the kind of research done with fruit flies. Pharyngula:

This idiot woman, this blind, shortsighted ignoramus, this pretentious clod, mocks basic research and the international research community. You damn well better believe that there is research going on in animal models — what does she expect, that scientists should mutagenize human mothers and chop up baby brains for this work? — and countries like France and Germany and England and Canada and China and India and others are all respected participants in these efforts.

Yes, scientists work on fruit flies. Some of the most powerful tools in genetics and molecular biology are available in fruit flies, and these are animals that are particularly amenable to experimentation. Molecular genetics has revealed that humans share key molecules, the basic developmental toolkit, with all other animals, thanks to our shared evolutionary heritage (something else the wackaloon from Wasilla denies), and that we can use these other organisms to probe the fundamental mechanisms that underlie core processes in the formation of the nervous system — precisely the phenomena Palin claims are so important.

In fact, irony of all ironies, fruit fly research has actually aided in understanding a genetic component or predisposition towards autism.

(h/t Heather)

I don’t pretend that I am some great political genius, but I do know that there are some truisms in America politics. One big truism is that senior citizens vote as a much higher percentage than other subset of the population and the biggest way to ensure that they will come out to vote is to threaten the programs upon which they rely.

That’s what makes announcing the intent to cut spending to Medicare by $1.3 trillion such an odd, Bizarro-world choice on the part of the McCain/Palin campaign.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show to confirm that those all-too-critical 27 Florida electoral votes don’t look like they’ll be heading into the McCain column:

You are so right when you say that this is a third rail – of Florida politics – certainly, and politics nationally among senior citizens is Medicare and Social Security and John McCain and Sarah Palin are shockingly wrong on both of those issues. I mean, it’s bad enough that he clearly and consistently has supported privatizing Social Security. Especially considering that this morning the stock market was down 797 points at one point and he thinks we should just be investing—the best thing to do is invest people’s Social Security funds in the stock market. [sarcastically] That’s a really good idea, right now.

But then, on top of that, he goes so far as to say in order to cover about five million more people out of the 47 million that don’t have health insurance, his plan is to cut Medicare $1.3 trillion. Now there is 3.2 million Floridians that are covered by Medicare; we have the second highest number of Medicare recipients in the country and a higher percentage even than California of our population. I can tell you, I represent a district in South Florida for sixteen years, between the Legislature and Congress and there is no way that my senior citizen constituents are going to be supporting John McCain. They are really concerned about two things: making sure they don’t have their safety net yanked out from under them and making sure that their health care, that they have fought for and earned in the golden years of their retirement.

For the record, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have both signed off on Health Care for America Now.