Links and Minifeatures 2009 02 18 Wednesday

Been a while since I posted this: In California, your property taxes are based upon your purchase price (plus no more than 2% per year, compounded). But if values fall, you can get your assessment lowered by appealing your assessment. It's really pretty easy - I appealed two years after I bought. One form and my assessment went down.

San Diego County Assessment Appeals Board has the forms necessary. If you're in some other county, use their form.

Flying pigs alert: Just when you're about to give up hope, bend over and kiss your backside goodbye, California State Senate Republicans do something intelligent and principled

The game of chicken in Sacramento just claimed its first victim, one that has to send a chill down Democratic spines. Republicans in the state Senate ousted their leader, the man who crafted a deal with Democrats to resolve the budget standoff with massive tax increases as part of the package. The GOP has apparently accelerated their car, and the Democrats will have to decide whether to swerve or crash:

I agree with Captain Ed:

The budget needs more than just $16 billion in cuts. California needs a real austerity program, one that sheds government workers and government programs. The Golden State also needs to stop borrowing money, which comes from the massive spending. How massive? The governor's office claims that they have kept spending level at $105 billion per year, but even at that rate, they spend more than 20 times what Minnesota does while only having about six times the population.

Trust your government: Obama poised to sign stimulus into law has absolutely nothing to do with Stocks drop on worries about economy, car makers

Yeah, and pigs are flying formation over the White House, too.

Gibbs told reporters traveling with Obama on Air Force One that he would not rule out the possibility of a second stimulus package. Yet he added that there are no plans for such a package at the moment

In other words, after wasting 1.2 Trillion dollars of your money, if the economy doesn't recover on its own despite the government sucking up all the investment capital, they'll go waste some more.

What the legislation is not expected to do is change the nation's economic fortunes quickly. So part of the White House's goal has been managing expectations.

If it's not going to work quickly, why do it? If the government just got out of the way, the economy would recover on its own. What makes you think the stimulus plan will work at all if it doesn't work quickly (like within 12 months) ? How is it "needed stimulus" if it doesn't happen when we need it?

Stocks tumbled Tuesday as investors grew more doubtful that the government can quickly turn around the still-weakening economy.

Has nothing to do with the fact that this is the first market session since the stimulus was approved by the Senate. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Nor is http://www.recovery.gov/ any kind of a neutral site, auditing where the money was actually spent. It's a White House run shill site telling you what the White House wants you to believe. The media doesn't have any problem pointing out this sort of thing when Republicans are in the White House.

And the financial press is writing things like this:
Fiscal Stimulus Is a Ruse Absent Fed Pixie Dust:

Advocates of fiscal stimulus would have us believe the government is Santa Claus, delivering gifts to those who are nice without extracting anything from those who are naughty. Economic modelers say with absolute certainty that every $1 spent by the government translates into $1.47 or $1.50 or $1.63 of gross domestic product. The specificity of these forecasts -- down to the last penny -- doesn't do much to convert the atheists among us. The same models that didn't see a recession until it was under way are now specialists in human psychology?

Besides, where's the proof that fiscal stimulus delivers?

"Empirically, nobody can point to a single Keynesian episode that worked," says Dan Mitchell, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington.

Read the whole thing

Obama is Big on Symbolism

As opposed to substance? What was your first clue?

At the battle of Asculum in 279 BC, the Greek king Pyrrhus defeated a Roman legion, but at frightful cost to his own troops. When sycophantic courtiers congratulated him on his "great victory," Pyrrhus responded: "one more such victory, and we shall be undone."

President Obama plans to celebrate his Asculum -- passage of the (at least) $787 billion "stimulus" bill -- with a signing ceremony in Denver Tuesday. Sycophantic liberal commentators hailed this as a great victory for the president, but it comes at the cost of the illusion Mr. Obama represents a change from the corrupt old ways of Washington.

He rammed through a bill crafted in secret, allowing Republicans (and most Democrats) absolutely no opportunity to proposed an alternative, and no hand in drafting the bill whatsoever, wheedled votes by asking "pretty please" but wasn't willing to compromise one whit on the biggest government spending bill ever, one with so many benefits set aside for so many Democratic interest groups that the entire thing could be most honestly entitled "The 2009 Election Spoils Bill". Not one Republican house member voted in favor, and only three senators. You own this one, Obama, and it's going to be a millstone about your neck. Yeah, you won passage of this bill. But it's going to sink you (along with the country's economy).

I would like for it to be otherwise. The only way to sink Obama involves sinking the country as well. I'd rather he did the right thing for the country. But he's not doing that.

California grinds to a halt

Republicans have almost no power in the state legislature apart from this supermajority requirement, so it's not surprising that they're reluctant to pass up a chance to use it to get spending cuts. Democrats heavily invested in nanny-state policies over the past few decades, though, and refuse to consider large-scale rollbacks of state government programs. Doing so would jeopardize their standing among key constituencies, especially public-sector unions like AFSCME and SEIU. Instead, they want to bulldoze Republicans into jacking up taxes even higher, making the state that much less competitive and forcing business relocation to increase.

and

Is that enough? If the Republicans refuse to budge, Democrats will likely play chicken and blame the layoffs of public employees on the GOP, especially given the concessions already made. Newt Gingrich lost that game in 1995 when he played it with Bill Clinton. Republicans had more strength in 1995, too, than they have had in California over the last decade.

No good deed goes unpunished, especially at the ballot box.

Today's assignment: Look up the real (economic) reason why Rome fell. Consider the parallels with the United States today.

Legislature adjourns with no budget; governor prepares to lay off 10,000

I have loads of sympathy for the individuals involved, but none for our bloated state budget.

Both parties exercise hypocrisy: Targeting the filibuster again

My position remains exactly as it was when the Republicans were in the majority: Keep the filibuster, but force those who want to filibuster a bill to actually stand up and filibuster. The current "virtual" filibuster is too cheap.

Bringing all senate business to a halt de-motivates the use, and gives an excellent strategy for peeling off senators who can tolerate a virtual filibuster, but would not be able to abide a real one.

The filibuster should only be used for the most important of things, and the need to defeat cloture means you have to have your support in line ahead of time.

Not to mention that anything that slows down the pace at which Congress rapes American taxpayers can't help but be a good thing.

Oh, and one more thing: In order to preclude recess appointments, Congress needs to have a quorum, not just one member of the majority party.

The Culture Of Corruption On Steriods

Why not? They were just as corrupt before, and got complete control of government. Obviously, the voters want more.

Here's your change: Going soft on the military dictatorship in Burma

So much for transparency

Remember Barack Obama's pledge to make this the Most Transparent Administration Evah? Josh Gerstein at Politico notices a few items that seem to have slipped by the national media, thanks to a lack of openness on the part of Obama's communications team. Obama issued three executive orders and a handful of regulations without ever announcing them:

"We didn't know because The One didn't tell us"? So much for hard hitting investigative reporting.

On the other hand, I have to remark on an impressive achievement for Obama: Four weeks in, and Jimmy Carter is starting to look good.