I think that this reader of KLo’s has it right:
For the better part of a year, Tea Parties have sprung up around the nation. If they are not ignored by the press, they are largely dismissed or characterized as “loons,” “bigots,” or “extremists.” I have read countless articles and columns which criticize the “tea baggers,” claiming that the protestors don’t even know what they are protesting.
All the while, people involved in the Tea Parties have claimed that they are not necessarily Republican, but include many Democrats and Independents as well. They claim that they attend rallies for various reasons (as opposed to not knowing their reasons). They often cite “out of control spending,” “runaway government,” or a “move toward socialism” as their top concerns. Their opposition to the monstrous health care reform bills has been consistent with this thinking. Despite rigged 10-year projections which claim the bill will be budget neutral, they rely on common sense which tells them that like Medicare, Social Security, the USPS, and Cash for Clunkers, government-controlled health care will end up being another entitlement albatross our country cannot afford in the long run. Because of this sound thinking, a national poll in December showed that the Tea Party movement enjoys more public support than either of the two major parties.
In spite of this, the MSM continues to dismiss, downplay, or deride the sentiments of Tea Partiers. Massachusetts has now shown that the Tea Party mentality is not an extreme, angry, southern, bigoted bunch. They are in fact independent thinkers, who are deeply concerned about our direction and politicians drunk with government power. The MSM has lost their battle.
And it’s only the first battle (second, if you count New Jersey and Virginia, but this is different, because it involves a national politician who will actually have a wrench to throw in the works of monstrous contraption that the Dems have been building in DC). Continuing retribution like this will occur this fall, and it will be terrible for them to behold, but liberating for the rest of us.
And as a California resident, I’m hoping that this was the template for, at a minimum, removing from power, if not office itself, the leftist harridans Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi.
What grates on me about the elite media and politicians and pundits slamming the tea partiers is that they are, by extension, pretty much slamming the Founding Fathers and the American Revolution and the Constitution. Maybe at Wellesley and Columbia and Harvard the Boston Tea Party and the reasons for it were left out of the history textbooks. But those things were in my history textbooks and those of everyone I know. The elites fail to recognize the visceral negative reactions many of of their words and policies are causing outside the Beltway. They will begin to recognize, to their dismay, sooner or later. Hopefully sooner, beginning this evening.
I liked hearing, all day, from local lefties that I deal with, how FOX is feeding fake numbers to the other networks to get Brown elected.
When quized about HOW the crazed conservatives at Fox control the numbers for all the MSM, I was told it’s all part of the move toward a one world government. And guess who is behind it?
The ex-President’s Bush.
I thought the first person was jerking my chain, knowing my leanings. But the second one, miles away, and these folks do NOT know each other. They had exactly the same story and told it to me almost word for word. It must have been in the red-neck, Dixiecrat talking points today.
I realize dealing with uniformed minions throwing around their power is indeed terrifying, but the US Postal Service was privatized almost 40 years ago, during the Nixon Administation. It is no longer an “entitlement albatross” hanging from our collective neck.
A little sanity, please?
I think their collective response would be, “So what?” They are much closer ideologically to the French Revolution (“Equality!”) than to the American (“Liberty!”).
She just conceded. Chalk another one up for the Tea Party.
The concession speech.
I realize dealing with uniformed minions throwing around their power is indeed terrifying, but the US Postal Service was privatized almost 40 years ago, during the Nixon Administation. It is no longer an “entitlement albatross” hanging from our collective neck.
It hasn’t been privatized yet. It’s just not part of the executive branch. Nine members of the board of governors are appointed by the President, they in turn appoint the Postmaster General and Deputy Postmaster General as the last two members. The Postmaster General actually runs the USPS agency. As I understand it, the USPS still gets funds from the US government as well as many powers associated with government agencies.
Jim Webb:
There speaks a man up for re-election in 2012 in a state far redder than Massachusetts. I expect he won’t be the last Democrat to re-discover his moderate roots.
Oh, and who won his first election, in a Democratic year, by less than 10,000 votes out of 2.3 million cast. I think Jim Webb can hear the thresher coming.
And, to be fair, I think his being a Democrat is more about his contempt for George W. Bush that any affection for the Democrats, particularly the weird Chicago thug/SF nancy boy coalition that Team Obama represents. Webb is the kind of guy who could really be in either party.
Pham
With 97 percent of precincts reporting, returns showed Brown leading Coakley 52-47 percent, by a margin of 120,000 votes. Independent candidate Joseph Kennedy was pulling 1 percent.
Carl has hit the nail on the head about Jim Webb – he has been generally a man of integrity in his government career (as well as a valiant soldier and a gifted writer before that), and it would seem likely that he has been pained by the Obama Administration from their first flubs (e.g., Rahm Emanuel). Webb has presidential aspirations of his own, and may also be seeking to distance himself from the Dunwich Horror that the Democrats in general and the Obama Administration in particular have become.
Geez, maybe it’s just my iconoclastic nature, but I kind of wish some of the commentary on the right about this win were different. There’s a little too much smug self-congratulation, as if it was any one of them that put 200,000 miles on his truck criss-crossing working-class Mass, shaking about a billion hands, and believing in himself when every high-paid Republican consultant and armchair quarterback pundit thought he was just this year’s sacrificial lamb.
This victory is Scott Brown’s, and those working non-college-degreed joes who defied their parents and the shades of their grandparents and pulled the lever for a Republican. It sure as hell doesn’t belong to the Republican leadership, nor even the theologians of the right at NRO and the Weekly Standard. I liked Brown’s own victory speech quite well: it had a sense of humility about it, a sense of awe at the responsibility that has been thrust upon him, and an awareness that he now represents all of Massachusetts, not just those who voted for him. Good for him. We could use a lot more of that humility — the old-fashioned concept that election made you a public servant, not first among equals, a master.
QFT
Also, the Leftosphere is exploding presently. They’re desperate and screaming for “reconciliation” which they take as Latin for “OMG-get-this-frakin-bill-passed-quick!!!”
lulz
Tap the brakes just a little bit, Carl. There were a lot of Tea Partiers that flew into Massachusetts on their own dime to man the phone banks for Brown. There was also quiet a bit of money funneled into Brown’s campaign by donations from all across the country. I would say that to some extent this was in fact a nationwide effort to contribute to this win. The key at this point going forward is to try and maintain this momentum going into the mid-term elections.
Yeah, that figures, T. I think the first requirement of a modern sans culotte is an utter inability to learn from experience. You know, if they let facts influence their belief in theories, they wouldn’t be leftists.
Well, let it happen. Caesarism is a vile curse, and I’m happy if the taste of this latest incarnation of the disease is so foul in the mouth, come November, that the American voters recoil from it as from a meal of dogshit for a full generation.
Yah OK Josh. No argument. I myself sent some cash Brown’s way, and I live 2500 miles away. I agree it’s prolly just my natural orneriness. I like a little humbleness in those who wear the garland, and particularly in those who merely laced the champ’s shoes up. But I’ve nothing critical at all to say to those who spent their own money or time on the campaign. They’ve earned every right to exult.
Webb was after all Navy Secretary under Reagan. It wouldn’t surprise me if he crossed the aisle again. And California may be rid of Boxer, but it’ll have Pelosi as long as she wants the seat. Although I could see the Dems in Congress tossing Pelosi and Reid out of their leadership positions before November. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if Bayh made the move in the Senate, considering his complaints about the far left having taken over the Dems.
We could see all sorts of interesting changes soon. Kill one (career), frighten a thousand.
I don’t want Webb to cross the aisle. What I want is decent Democrats to throw the Caesarist minions of the God President, and the ugly alliance between guilt-racked academics and trust-fund liberals and the self-pitying permanent welfare bums under the bus, purge themselves of the Stalinists and the Stalinist mindset, and get back to the clear proud working-class vision of the Truman/Jackson Democratic Party. The guys who actually believed in good jobs, strong families, victory overseas, truth, justice, and the American way. To be sure, they, too, shouldn’t be allowed untrammeled power, but that’s what a decent Republican party is for. Between the two of them, we can have some plain ordinary good governing, low-key, economical, humble, focussed on beating the hell out of foreign murderous crazies and fixing the potholes, and leaving matters of life and death and infinite social justice alone, as befits men aware that they are not angels.
I wouldn’t mind getting rid of Babs Boxer, but that’s another story. That’s just because she’s really, really stupid, and it’s embarassing to be represented by such a lightweight.
As has been said many times before and by many others, one measure that might just restore honesty to politics is a simple but difficult one. Term limits in Congress.
I am not American, but it seems to me that it can’t be healthy in a democratic country for one man to spend 47 years in the upper house of the legislature.
Gah, no, Fletch. We have term limits in California. I think the results speak for themselves.
What term limits do is put the cart before the horse. The problem is not those who direct the power of government, the problem is the power of government itself. Keep in mind government power is largely exercised by unelected bureaucrats and “regulators” who have lifetime job secuity. You didn’t notice the TSA or IRS changing hugely when Team Obama took over, did you? Nor will you notice much change when President Palin is sworn in on 20 January 2013.
The only thing elected officials do is steer Juggernaut, when they can be bothered to pay attention. And all term limits do is replace competent steering with incompetent newbie steering and distract the attention of elected officials, so that they aren’t really interested in doing a good job — because they won’t last in the job very long anyway. They just focus on short-term results, e.g. pleasing a generously-donating interest group (here in California, public employee unions), so that they can springboard to another polticial job, or a nice consulting gig. The result looks very much like no one is steering, and that’s a good description of California right now. Everyone has agreed for years that the ship of state is headed for the rocks, but no one can be bothered to take the wheel when they’re all busy looting every fixtture not nailed down and cramming into the lifeboats.
No, keep the potential reward of very long service for those who prove themselves worthy of it. But reduce the power of government in general, so that those unelected bureaucrats have less influence, and so the steering by elected officials is less important. Less heavy, Juggernaut will be less likely to crush and destroy when it goes awry. And, bonus, with the reduced power you are less likely to attract Caesars.
Think of it as a materials problem. We must build our ship of state out of inferior steel — ordinary men and women. Given that, we’re better off not building RMS TItanic and putting all our lives on board. Build a bunch of little boats, so that even if one hits a berg, it doesn’t take us all down with it.
Carl, one solution to the problem you describe is for employment contracts in government “service” to be limited-term as well – and non-renewable. At least for administrative positions; there are some people in government service whom it would be useful to retain. As in those who actually do a real job; various safety and accident inspectors, for example. And certainly those who put their lives on the line for their country – which category does not only include the military.
We have a very similar problem in the UK; see the rather brilliant TV series “Yes Minister” for details. And perhaps if the permanent staff didn’t know the system much better than elected officials there would be a chance of alleviating it.
Nancy Pelosi is Speaker because she won a contest with Steny Hoyer. Nancy won because she carried the California delegation with a margin big enough to offset Steny’s lead in the other 49 states.
Steny is a nice guy and a good man. He supports, as many on this blog do, science and technology work. He supports, albeit quietly, nuclear power in his district. People generally view him as a moderate.
Why, yes, I do live in his district. I have had dealings with him and the entire Maryland delegation in my role as Maryland Team Leader for AIAA political work.
I wonder if Steny will make an appearance at the Congresswoman Donna Edwards party on January 30th. The last time I saw him was at a party on January 10th.
I’m with Carl in not wanting aisle crossers. To the extent that they can hold off the damage being done to the US economy by Obama, Pelosi, and Reid; I do want their support. But many of them have been willful participants in the government lust for power.
However, I’m not opposed to term limits. Yet, I do agree that isn’t the end all be all. What we need is a legislature that meets a lot less. A 24/7/365 legislature feels the need to pass laws to justify their time. More laws restrict liberty and choke efficiency. It’s wishful thinking, but if the federal government was restricted to just a few months of work, they’d focus and write better laws. It’s worked for Texas, and I hear Republican state senators discussing extending the sessions, which proves once again that party doesn’t matter.
Fletcher, you have an interesting suggestion. It relates to a question I’ve been wondering about over the past few weeks: When and how did we ever wind up in the situation that it is almost impossible to fire someone in the civil service? I’m inclined to look for procedural changes as solutions to long term problems, and I think one important move would be to make it easier to fire people. My wife is a teacher. She and many others work hard and are good at what they do. But there are always some that are completely incompetent. They need to be fired. The principals know who they are, but their hands are tied. It takes years to fire somebody. It’s far easier to get them moved to a different school.
I know this problem has been around for years. My Dad used to work for NASA. This is back 30-40 years ago before it became a typically sclerotic government agency. He had a secretary who was completely incompetent. She had worked for half the departments at the center. When he had the chance, he got her moved on to the next one, too, complaining all the while to us at home that he wished he could just fire her.
These aren’t necessarily union members. It’s not about union contracts (at least not here in Texas). It’s about civil service rules. What can we do about this?
When and how did we ever wind up in the situation that it is almost impossible to fire someone in the civil service?
The civil service rules were put in place about 100 years ago. The idea was to allow for professional civil servants to be free from political influence due to patrionage. However, I think it has gotten completely out of hand with civil servants being unelected, unaccountable, and almost unfireable no matter how badly they screw up. At least with patrionage, they had to be responsive to the people in power. As it is now, they do what they please and just wait out any administration they don’t like.
The idea of contracts with defined terms for bureaucracy administrators is interesting. You wouldn’t want to do that at the worker bee level – at least for the jobs that require competence like air traffic controllers – but ending careerism in the management could be a big step towards accountability.
Larry, I agree “term limits” would not be appropriate for civil servants at the worker bee level, but it should still be easier to fire them. Year after year the deadwood builds up. It is expensive, causes service quality to suffer, and demoralizes the good workers.
How about we keep everyone working for a government paycheck who is actually doing something — building something, controlling something, patrolling something, standing guard somewhere — and we fire everyone who is simply passing out taxpayer money? If some taxpayer still want to give their money to someone else, we can allow a small government department that draws up a list of names and addresses and passes them out in a little pamphlet to anyone so inclined to use them.
Or how about we repeal the 16th Amendment? If Congress were restricted to raising funds by taxing things people could choose not to buy, there’d be an automatic brake on how bloated the beast could get, just like there’s an automatic brake to how greedy and incompetent Microsoft can get before folks simply stop buying Windows.
The difficulty with an income tax is that no one can do without an income. But it seemed like such a good idea at the time. Like the first hit of crack, I guess.
Or how about we insist government provide us with money-back guarantees on its products, like we get from business? If health care “reform” doesn’t bend the price curve, then the Democratic Majority owes me umpty thousand dollars, come 2030. Plus interest and penalties.
But there might not be enough money, I guess. So instead let us have gladiatorial games, broadcast live on C-SPAN, with legislators whose sponsored laws failed their warranties and did not live up to their promises fighting tigers and leopards in the arena. If you live, you can go home and write your memoirs (to warn others).
One serious issue with term limits is the musical chairs defense. There are enough governmental positions that everyone just shuffles one to the left and starts doing some other random thing they don’t have the first clue about.
“Liberals” are the New Tories. You can easily envision “Sir” Thomas Frank, at the time of the original Tea Party, writing a broadside “What’s the Matter With Massachusetts, or: Why Don’t These Peasants Just Shut Up and Submit to Being Ruled by Their Betters?”
Finance a small government with excise taxes and duties? Crazy-talk! Srsly, I’d like to repeal the 17th amendment — let the States check federal power as intended.
Also, don’t happen to agree with term limits for Senators or Congressmen. If the people (or state) want Mr. Congressmanforlife in there, it’s no one else’s business to tell them otherwise. If that makes Mr. Congressmanforlife too powerful, then you deal with that issue instead.
Whenever I hear someone extoll the virtures of the Fair Tax idea, I ask them about repealing the 16th Amendment. Without repealing the 16th, you can rest assured that within a few years of enacting the Fair (consumption) Tax, someone would declare an emergency and institute a “temporary” income tax. You’d end up with both. I guarantee it.
The political reality is that it takes the vote of 2/3rds the House and Senate before an amendment goes to the states. It then takes 3/4ths of the states to ratify the amendment. Over 40 states have their own income tax. Unless the repeal amendment explicitly exempted state income taxes, what are the odds that states would agree to eliminating their own income taxes by ratifying the amendment? I’d put the odds at somewhere between winning PowerBall and hell freezing over. It isn’t going to happen. That’s why I support the flat tax.
As to being able to fire bad civil servants even at the worker bee level, I’d love to see it happen but doubt I’ll live so long. It needs to happen at all levels of government, not just the federal level.
The solution to career bureaucrats accumulating too much power is well known, the US military applies it to officers and most enlisted men. Permanent Change of Station every three years, dragging the family along to a new city and new schools, often not even on the same continent.
Do the same to our modern mandarins, and just like the Chinese emperors, don’t let them have authority over their home districts. Lower GS levels can “homestead” as the NCOs call it, but the higher ranks MUST be churned regularly to prevent stovepiping, collusion, and cabals.
A slight change in discussion: So last night, the Democrats lost momentum, and particularly lost a seat it had controlled for a very long time. When a blue state like that goes purple, President Obama will need start wondering about his second term.
In just over a week, he will give his first SOTU address. I’ve contended for a long time that the SOTU would be the time to address the future of NASA. Regardless of what one feels about NASA and the government vs private space program; no one can deny that KSC represents a lot of jobs in Florida. It’s not just the Shuttle program ending soon, but also the development and preparation of ISS components. That’s a majority of that centers bread and butter. Throw in MSFC and JSC losses, and the President is looking at more jobs lost in the short term. And those jobs, again regardless of your understanding of macro economics theories, will be in jeopardy just as the 2010 elections are occurring.
I think this makes for interesting consideration in what he will do.
The 16th Amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with state income taxes. It overruled a provision in the main body of the Constitution restricting the federal government to taxes apportioned according to the populations of the states.
Though I wouldn’t be surprised if some drooling nitwit tried to argue against a repeal by claiming it would prohibit state income taxes. Constitutional illiteracy runs rampant these days, even among constitutional law professors.
I don’t think it’s going to be NASA, Leland. It’s got to be a We Are The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For breathless onanism that can seem focused laserlike on jobs and yet also reassure Democrat pigs at the trough with knees nerveously knocking that he isn’t going to turn off the spigot yet.
I predict, given the trial balloon launched a few days ago, it’s going to be education. For the children, you know? A nice forward defense agaisnt those bastard Rethuglicans claiming our policies are endangering the tykes with mountains of debt, a shriveled dollar, or both. Ties in nicely with our now…er…inoperative former future-thinking green jobs ‘n’ Earth summitry shtick. Plus an opportunity for some photogenic teachers and pupils in the front row.
So let’s slop some tax gravy in the teachers’ unions’ trough. Something like Bill Clinton’s 100,000 cops on the street or whatever it was. A 100,000 teachers up against the schoolroom wall, maybe. The final wording may vary.
Which is not to say NASA can’t steal some crumbs from that chow line. Why not?
The battle in America between the Old and New World traditions are seen in our two main political parties. The Republican Party is the older of the two if we take it back to Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, to Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Nelson Rockefeller and John McCain. Republicans are elite meddlers believing the national government should manage the industry and affairs of the American People. They stumbled in the 1960’s with Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. They left the party with people who do not accept original GOP policies.
The Democrat Party was the libertarian, state’s rights, individual freedom and local government party, following Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe to Jackson and Cleveland. They made the biggest swing from their policies at the turn of the century, adopting the Old World policies of Rousseau and Marx. The GOP, except for the Goldwater-Reagan moments, held fast to their better-than-thou beliefs from its origin. In the life of our Republic, the only political party that held fast to the ideals of America, which made her free and prosperous, was the 19th century Democrat Party. claysamerica.com
Carl,
There has already been some talk of aligning NASA with educational efforts. STEM is a hot topic in both Republican and Democratic circles.
I have another thought. NASA has been shown to have real problems. Just check out the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report. NASA is, also, a rather small agency. Making NASA a shining example of reform done right could benefit everyone, Democrats, Republicans and independents alike.
I didn’t mean to suggest that NASA would be some center point of the SOTU. I think I’d agree with education being a safe topic for which Obama can make positive results for himself. He can barely socialize it any more than it already is, and so he can make minor changes that he’ll claim are revolutionary. And nobody will actually know the results for half a generation.
NASA is a small fraction of the budget (especially after the addition of TARP and ARRA). But electorally, it is big. To save jobs, he will have to do something big in the short term. I think that would mean Shuttle extension (maintains most of current work force, and even adds jobs to places like NOLA). Another option is to throw a lot of money at NASA as a jobs program and do a JFK announcement. I doubt this approach, but its a better jobs program (read as purely saving jobs) than throwing money at bankrupt car companies. I think without the loss yesterday, there would be more consideration of the long term (if any consideration at all).
In the life of our Republic, the only political party that held fast to the ideals of America, which made her free and prosperous, was the 19th century Democrat Party.
You left out that part about the Dems Of that time also being the party whose “ideals” also included secession, slavery, segregation , slaughter (Jackson and the Trail of Tears), and corruption.
Maybe I’ve got it wrong, but isn’t NASA, and space in general, something of a desperate straw to be grasped for a POTUS with regards to public spotlight? I’m reminded of GWB’s man-on-the-mars proclamations, and I recall them now only vaguely as the random blathering of a desperate official. I mean, this isn’t the 60’s. Big government space project speeches aren’t going to energize anyone whose income stream isn’t drawn from that river. It only comes-off as if the man (whomever it is) is trying to impersonate JFK, and it’s about as convincing as Kerry’s weird vocal fluctuations during his ’04 run – creepy.
I still don’t think so, Leland. I’m sorry to say so, but you’re speaking for an older generation of Democrats, folks who still think of JFK as a young man. To the youthful bands of Obama elves, JFK is like Air Supply. Something their parents listened to while making out in a Chevette, yuk, and not coolly retro like That 70s Show either.
To ye striplings, space (at least LEO) is not the Final Frontier, and astronauts are silly overly serious people who make ludicrous Adult Swim-parody-worthy cross-country cougar hunts in adult diapers, ha ha ha. What’s cool and trendy is Spaceship Earth powered by photosynthesis alone and piloted by gay cross-cultural ambiguously sexed pilots. (Did you note how much money Avatar has made?)
Now if NASA could throw together some plans for a solar-dilithium hybrid starship that could promise a Junior Year Very Abroad Indeed, studying colorful native traditions on Rigel IX, that would be a different story. Or find something wrong with the Sun, preferably caused by the RIAA or rogue ISPs, that must be fixed up right quick.
NASA via JJ Abrams.
When running of election, Obama mentioned delaying the Ares program for several years to divert the money to education. There seems little chance that he’s going to be in favor of throwing additional funding NASA’s way, even if it were a good idea.
larry j,
FWIW, that Obama idea of moving money from NASA to education seemed to be more of a trial balloon than anything else. More recent talk is of some sort of NASA educational effort.
Leland
We could start by removing the air conditioning from the capital building. Before AC they would always recess for the summer. 🙂
As to being able to fire bad civil servants…
This can happen, and does, when every level of management does their job correctly. It takes appropriate performance appraisals and documenting the instances of poor performance. It also requires that the manager treat everyone the same since it is hard to fire someone for doing what the bosses friend gets away with. It also may require that a supervisor ‘write up’ their supervisor for not doing his/her job correctly. Not easy but doable within the existing system.
Nancy throws in the towel — she can’t pass the Senate’s Bill.
They’ve realized that they cannot boil the ocean — perhaps they’ll do something more sensible or GTFO.