Representative John Boehner (R-OH) said something curious on Meet the Press just now. He said that the Obama stimulus package focuses too much on giving money directly to states instead of helping people keep their jobs. What’s odd about this is that states can’t borrow money—they can’t run deficits like the federal government can, meaning that if there’s a shortfall, the states must cut services and jobs.
State governments and their contractors are huge employers. I don’t get why Boehner would argue against federal aid to the states in order to keep them solvent.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration will soon launch recovery.gov, a website dedicated to tracking expenditures from that aforementioned stimulus package. The website “shall provide data on relevant economic, financial, grant, and contract information in user-friendly visual presentations to enhance public awareness of the use funds made available in this Act,” and will also “provide a means for the public to give feedback on the performance of contracts awarded for purposes of carrying out this Act.”
Jory John of 826 Valencia published a fabulous collection in the Times today of children’s requests of Obama. My favorite was by this smart-ass. It’s something I would have written in fourth sixth grade too:
Dear President Obama,
Here is a list of the first 10 things you should do as president:
1. Fly to the White House in a helicopter.
2. Walk in.
3. Wipe feet.
4. Walk to the Oval Office.
5. Sit down in a chair.
6. Put hand-sanitizer on hands.
7. Enjoy moment.
8. Get up.
9. Get in car.
10. Go to the dog pound.
…had a very shiny nose. He was about thirteen at the time. Up until then, the nose had been of normal size, shape, and color. But his body had changed a lot in the last year—his nose most awkwardly of all. It was bright red. And if you ever saw him, you would even say it glows.
All of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names. Lush. Cardinal-diver. Ground control, even. While it was accepted that Rudolph was, and might always be, too immature for their annual flight on the 24th, this red nose thing made him a total outcast. They never let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games. Not Reindeer Polo, or Reindeer Pétanque. Not even skee-ball.
Then one foggy Christmas Eve, Santa came to say: “Rudolph with your nose so bright…” he cleared his throat for dramatic effect and stared down a particular jerk, Blitzen, “…won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?” This made no sense. Santa was known as a conservative, traditionalist, hard-ass. He’d essentially had the same eight reindeer (by name) for every flight since 1 A.D., trading in older reindeer for similar-looking younger ones every five years or 150,000 miles (like Menudo) and simply changing the nametag on their collars (like Menudo).
The issue this year was that it was 1939. Germany had invaded Poland the previous September, not leaving enough time to sort through the Naughty/Nice paperwork for all 80 million Germans. Santa had no practical choice but to move them all to the Naughty list, but, not wanting to deliver 80 million individual gifts of coal to their countrymen, both Donner and Blitzen went on strike.
Aaaaaand I have no idea how to finish this before dinner….
On propositions, I voted to decriminalize marijuana, to keep the state income tax, and to outlaw dog racing. This last one was the toughest decision, as upwards of 3,000 people will have to find new jobs in a tough economy. What helped my decision was that the proposition calls for dog racing to be outlawed by 2010, not immediately.
How, in terms of method
My wife and I went together, saw lots of neighbors, marveled at how many people bring their dogs and babies to the polls. This was my sixth time voting in Cambridge—and the first time I ever had to wait in line. We waited for about half an hour, and while the wait didn’t frustrate us, the lack of a single poll worker walking the lines did: we saw dozens of people get to the front of the line only to be told they were in the wrong one.
We love our precinct’s methodology. You get a one-page ballot. It’s well-designed so there’s no confusion. You fill in a bubble alongside your choice, and it’s done with a black marker. Hence, our precinct uses optical scanners to tally votes. It’s damn simple and nearly idiot- and fraud-proof. Why any locale uses a touchscreen machine I’ll never know—it’s a lot cheaper and foolproof to buy extra paper ballots than it is to buy and maintain a touchscreen machine. And it leaves a voter-verifiable paper-trail.
After voting, we had coffee and bagels and walked to our bus and train.
Democracy is so much better with coffee and bagels.
To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food card and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”
To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.
Some more depressing video from outside a Sarah Palin rally. For my parents and their friends: were people attending a mainstream political event—that of a vice presidential candidate—ever this abhorrent, or is it just that we have the ability to record this stuff and share it that it seems so much more prevalent?
After being in Alaska the past week, I have a rudimentary but legit appreciation for how a minority of Alaskans could want to secede from the U.S. The main grievance of secessionists there is that the Lower 48 has too much control over Alaska’s resources. Well, how are they going to feel now that the banking system is being bailed out not just by the federal government but by European governments?
I hope to post a bunch of short posts over the next week about the honeymoon and generally about things in the news I’ve missed. But as a Democrat with libertarian leanings, I can really only begin to imagine what free-marketers (not to be confused at all with modern conservatives) think about this story:
After a weekend of crisis talks on both sides of the Atlantic, European nations and the United States unveiled on Monday a staggering and coordinated series of multibillion-dollar rescue packages to shore up teetering banks and guarantee credit to free up lending between them.
While the broad outlines of some of the deals represented a concerted response to plummeting stock markets and frozen credit markets, the leading European economies also embraced some individual steps, underlining the differences of approach they have sought to bury in the face of the worst financial crisis of the post-war era.
On Sunday, European leaders agreed to act at a national level from what officials called a “toolbox” of measures fitting their individual requirements.
“The time of everyone moving alone is over,” President Nicolas Sarkozy of France told a news conference in Paris.
Don’t get me wrong, this has to happen. But the number of things allowed to go wrong in the market because of a mish-mash of regulation and non-regulation (or willful ignorance) is dispiriting to anyone who thinks markets should work with no government involvement whatsoever.
