Mark Byron

'79 or '89?

The unrest that toppled the Tunisian strongman earlier this month has gone viral and hit Egypt, where it's US-backed Big Man, Hosni Mubarak, is hanging by a thread. The viral nature of early 2011's events remind me of the events of 1989, where much of Eastern Europe ditched the Soviet yoke and moved towards democracies, many (notably the Czech Republic and Poland) with a neoliberal lean to their politics.

Those were Good Things, where the liberal/neocon vision of all people regardless of race or creed wanting what the folks in the Anglosphere want held true. That isn't always the case when the people have had enough of a Big Man.

If we go back a decade from the fall of the Berlin Wall, we see another vision of what can happen when a Big Man falls; there was widespread protest against the Shah of Iran in 1979, with critiques coming both from Western-friendly reformers and from Shia militants. The early moves saw a move towards democratic reforms, but were quickly overrun by the move to put the ayatollahs in charge, a move that has left Iran in a bounded-democratic theocracy for the last three decades.

David Warren and Ross Douthat have some interesting pieces on Egypt in the hopper, both warning against leaning too much into the happy-face side of things. The news of the day has a loose coalition of reformers, led by former nuke chief Mohamed ElBarade, working with the Islamist-leaning Muslim Brotherhood in the anti-government protests. The latter is a bit scary, since the MB folks gave us both the ideological boss of al Qaeda as well as one of the 9/11 kamikaze pilots.

The optimist would hope that the radicals will calm down once they are part of the political process (they're currently stomped on by Mubarak) and be less radical once they are in the tent wizzing out. The realists will worry about them taking over a frail democracy much as Hezbollah has done in Lebanon.

To top that steaming bowl of unknown unknowns off, let's not forget the Coptic community in Egypt. For all of Mubarak's flaws, they have not been overly hostile to their Christians. That would likely change if the MB tries to force conversions or otherwise drive the Copts underground or out of the country.

Change isn't always good and the devil you know can be better than the devil you don't know. Lots of prayer concerns, not too many good answers.

 

Midnight Musings

Some good news from Ann Arbor; they grabbed the Ravens' DC, Greg Mattison to do the same job at Michigan. Mattison coached at Michigan before as a defensive coordinator and was new head coach Brady Hoke's boss a quarter-century ago at WMU. Now, the child is father to the man, or at least bossing his old boss.

I'm not familiar with Mattison, but his resume looks near-perfect. Given the Ravens' reputation as a great defensive team, anyone running that defense earns some respect. It seems to be a downward move, but at 61 and likely maxed out as a coordinator, he might have opted to take on the challenge of turning around the defense he ran in the mid-90s.

If Michigan can turn things around and win a Big Ten title, Mattison will look like a miracle worker. The same couldn't be said if Baltimore goes to the Super Bowl in the next few years.

______

The current Melo drama is over. NJ vetoed the proposed trade, as new Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov nixed the deal.

The Pistons-Jersey part of the trade, where they swap doghouse denizens Rip Hamilton and Troy Murphy, might still go on in some form; the rumored package had the Pistons getting Johan Petro and a second rounder as well. That still might make sense for Detroit, since they have played well with Hamilton getting paid about $150,000 a game for what most people pay $500 a game for- having a front-row seat to watch an NBA game.

With Rip a well-paid observer, the Pistons rattled off a three-game winning streak before losing well at Boston last night. The Pistons might be better off without him, especially if Murphy can be talked into staying and provide something like the 15 points and 10 rebound production he has had in the past.

______

The Detroit schools are scrambling to stay afloat, and have put together a (deliberately?) scary budget that projects 62 students per high school classroom. Something does not compute; it might be that there is way too much overhead in the form of administrative staff that doesn't shrink as enrollment falls. Retirement costs might be another factor, as those legacy costs might be doing to the DPS what they did to GM and Chrysler.

This might be a good test of new governor Rick Synder's skills. Some creative combination of charter schools and local college help could provide a good education for the money Detroit has on hand. The whole school system might need to be trashed and have a leaner entity take its place in Motown, with the state eating some of the legacy costs.

__________

It won't go anywhere, but the House voted on party lines to scrap "Obamacare." Only three Democrats crossed the aisle on the vote. It's unlikely to pass the Senate and would be swatted down with a veto if it did, but the House GOP at least laid down a marker and tried to do what they've been campaigning on for a year.

Battling Big Boogiemen

Often times, what we are afraid of drives our ideology and even our theology. On the religious level, many Christian groupings are better defined by what they aren't than what they are; the name of the main metagrouping of American Christians is from their protesting Catholic praxis.

When I was writing the previous post on Kent Conrad and how a precursor of North Dakota's Democratic party also was a precursor to the Canadian NDP, what struck me was the Non-Partisan League's distrust of big businessmen from the Twin Cities running the prairies from afar. Much of the rhetoric of the left is fearful of big business; quite a few paleocons will join them in that. The modern left, like their Progressive Era ancestors, see an active government hand as a counterweight to big business.

Conversely, the populist right has their big boogieman in Leviathan, a.k.a. Big Government. They see bean-counters from Washington or the UN/WTO/IMF running things from afar without caring what Joe Sixpack thinks. For them, decentralization of power, giving it either to the people at large or more local levels of government, is the answer to their fears.

Bigness makes us nervous. For instance, the powers that be have signed off on a Comcast-NBC merger. That doesn't have much of a direct impact on our lives, but the vertical integration of the media market leaves the decision of what does and doesn't get to our TVs and computer screens in a smaller set of decision-makers. You don't have to be Ralph Nader-left to be worried about that.

Bigness in business isn't all bad. In many cases, it gives us economies of size that make things more affordable and more uniform; I was grabbing a quick lunch at McDonald's while I was reading that article in a dead-tree USA Today. However, such size comes with a lack of accountability on the personal level.

That's true on the corporate level and on the political level. Big Business is out of our control as individuals, as is Big Government.

What do you do about that lack of control? In some cases, doing nothing is the best case. You may want to have the scope of national-level control or billion-dollar-level R&D budgets to get things done; such critters aren't going to be all that responsive to individuals. However, if that lack of control becomes a problem, you can either change who controls it (have government take over) or decentralize it (anti-trust action, regulating on the state level, or not regulating at all).

Sometimes, Big Business makes sense. Big Government does too under the right conditions. That is, if the scope required to do the task well requires that it be done big.

An American Dipper

Kent Conrad is packing it in as well, as we get a flood of lame duck announcements. He's only 62, so it isn't age that's the factor; it's that North Dakota has become a bad place to be a liberal Democrat...

...or should I say a New Democrat. When I looked at Conrad's Wikipedia page to grab his birthdate, it noted that he was "member of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party, the North Dakota affiliate of the Democratic Party." That was a new concept to me, but it sounded a lot like the DFL-Democratic-Farmer-Labor construct of Minnesota.

The joy of a good Wikipedia entry is links to the terms in play. NPL is Non Partisan League, which sounds nice and centrist at first; it merged in with the ND Democrats in 1956.

Not quite, as you click through and read.

The Nonpartisan League advocated state control of mills, grain elevators, banks and other farm-related industries in order to reduce the power of corporate political interests from Minneapolis, Minnesota.... It also spread northward into Canada, running in provincial elections and providing some of the basis for the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Saskatchewan and the Progressive Party of Canada.

I'm going to painting myself as a hopeless PoliSci geek with a Canadaphile streak, for the CCF rings a bell as one of the precursors of the socialist-flavored New Democratic Party. The CCF was home to Kiefer Sutherland's grandfather Tommy Douglas, who is considered the father of Canada's national heath insurance system when the plan he set up as Saskatchewan premier went national; Douglas helped merge the CCF with a labor party to create the NDP in 1961.

That's not to say that Conrad is NDP-left, but there are few rural areas where big-government liberalism sells well (Vermont and Maine are exceptions); North Dakota isn't one of them. That makes this seat a strong prospect for a Republican pick-up last year, since ND votes Republican at the presidential level.

 

Donut Politics

Modern American politics is fast becoming a donut; there is a gaping hole in the middle. We have the sighting of two Timbits heading out to pasture as Kay Bailey Hutchinson and Joe Lieberman are both hanging it up and not running for reelection.

I predicted the Hutchinson retirement last month; she was too moderate for an increasingly conservative-minded Texas GOP and there seemed not to be room for an independent run a la Lisa Murkowski.

Lieberman has much the same problem. In 2006, you have a perfect storm of an inept GOP candidate and a left netroots revolt over Iraq oust Joementum in his primary, only to have Lieberman run as an independent and run essentially as the center-right alternative, getting Republicans to jump ship and at least keep a yea vote on key foreign policy issues.

That was increasingly unlikely to repeat. Connecticut has a fairly deep GOP bench that won't roll over and play dead this go-round, and Lieberman's support of McCain in 2008 and other unliberal things have made him persona non grata in Democratic circles. There was no centrist plurality to be found for him in 2012; defection to the GOP was unlikely, since he would be far too liberal to be nominated in a contested primary.

The political nightmare for the Senate is if you have 45 conservatives dead set against anything liberal and 45 liberals dead set against anything conservative. Both can block legislation and nothing gets done. At least nothing new gets done; they might deign to pass a budget, but any new initiatives get shot down in flames.

That's not always a bad thing; we actually ran a bit of a surplus in the late 90s when such gridlock kicked in, since Clinton couldn't raise spending and the GOP couldn't cut taxes. The economy grew and the added taxes from more income balanced things out.

However, it isn't pretty politics.

 

One Less Big Man

Tunisia doesn't get much press, but it is in the middle of a riot-driven ouster of its long-time president Ben Ali. He's blown the Popsicle stand and gone into exile in Saudi Arabia, which seems to be where all Islamic-leaning tyrants retire to. Ben Ali was being treaded as Ben Fido by the people after serving as president for 22 years.

Mr Ben Ali was only Tunisia's second president since independence from France in 1956. He was last re-elected in 2009 with 89.62% of the vote.

89.62%? He's either really popular or he had some old PRI dinosaurs from Mexico in to stack the deck. It's hard to go from 90% support to getting run out of town on a rail in two years, so methinks it is the latter.

One can hope that Tunisia gets a functioning democracy out of this, as a number of African countries have moved away from the de-facto president-for-life Big Man model in the 90s and 00s. The prime minister and speaker of the house are both assuming leadership and French-flavored businesses are getting looted, so let's hope that Carthage doesn't get destroyed another time.

I didn't place Carthage in Tunisia until now. The North African coast, yes, but my mind never pin-pointed it to Tunisia until now, as the main Tunis airport is Carthage International.

Send the Marine

They have a Marine in charge of the nativist National Front, Marine Le Pen. She's the daughter of party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen and "wants to break with its xenophobic, anti-Islam image[.]" There is a market in European politics for a nationalist party that both reigns in the EU and slows immigration; however, the early versions of those parties were often racists or had Nazi overtones. It's up to Ms. Le Pen to create a new meme to counter the Pitchfork Pat-on-steroids image of her dad.

The NF isn't all that conservative, for they would keep the rather statist economic status quo in France. However, most nativist parties get a "right-wing" label when racism often crops up in both left and right wing versions; lets not forget that Nazi is short for National Socialist.

Tuscon +7

I'm not sure how to read the media coverage of the Tuscon shootings. Here are a few thoughts after taking a few days off to let things settle

(1) The media seem to be making much more of a bit deal of the shooting than things would merit.

(2) There was a rush to a conservative-rhetoric-caused-the-shooting meme that became the prime story. A similar meme happened after the Oklahoma City bombing; the media likes to make any shooter a tool of the activist right, even if they aren't part of the right. Liberal activists weren't raked over the coals for the Discovery Channel shooter or the Unibomber, both of which had three-sigma left views. The Tuscon shooter needed mental help and seemed to have no connection to the 1.25 sigma conservatives like Beck and Palin.

However, there is a meme that guns=conservative and military metaphors=conservative. When there is a shooting, conservatives get blamed for their Second Amendment views and get blamed for harsh rhetoric, not remembering the daily Worst Person in the World pantheon of MSNBC.

(3) The media would rather spend its politics window on this than a Republican agenda to scale back the "excesses of the last two years." Part of it is that Tuscon is a far better story than the debt ceiling and part of it is that this makes conservatives look bad, and the media leans left.

(4) It's an excuse to get multiple digs in at Palin. Since Palin-bashing seems to be the most popular parlor game in media circles, once reason (2) is in play, keeping the meme going is too good to pass up.

(5) The media loves a Cute Missing Female story. This is a Cute Martyred Female story, with a pretty young congresswoman clinging to life. If Ed Pastor (another AZ congressman) were the one shot, the media would be significantly less interested. A Hispanic victim like Raul Grijalva would have been even more media-friendly, for it would put the immigration wars front and center.

(6) Conservatives seem to be feeding the frenzy by denying any connection. That just creates a political crazy cycle that feeds the meme. Good bloggers know not to feed trolls, but sometimes we don't know how to slam the fridge shut on a nasty meme.

(7) All of the above feed into the "liberal lamestream media" meme of the right, so the natural reaction of the right is to make up lists like this. Guilty as charged.

Reining in Big-Money Preachers

Sen. Grassley had been probing some high-profile TV ministries, including Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar and Paula White. His staff released a report that didn't propose any new laws-

The review by the committee did not impose new rules on the religious organizations or suggest they be stripped of their tax-exempt status. But it did bring to light compensation practices that may raise eyebrows in the non-profit community and lead to a discussion of new tax policies for religious organizations.

"The staff review sets the stage for a comprehensive discussion among churches and religious organizations," Grassley said in a prepared statement. "I look forward to helping facilitate this dialogue and fostering an environment for self-reform within the community."

I'm not sure what reforms one would do.

Do some of these folks make too much money? Yes. However, would we want to set up a salary structure for pastors?

Are pastoral allowances often abused? Yes; housing allowances let pastors have a good chunk of money tax-free and that might be capped to keep pastors for paying for starter-castles tax-free.

Can a pastor use gifts from parisioners as a way of getting tax-free income? Yes; since things like birthday gifts or "love offerings" given a visiting speaker often fall under the gift catagory rather than a donation, the recepient wouldn't be taxed.

However, there isn't much in the way of legal steps that can easily be done. Making churches file financial statements with the IRS might be one step, but it also runs the risk of the IRS auditing churches that the president doesn't like; if there are no records, there is not coorsive tool for good or ill.

Salary caps for pastors is unlikely to fly in this Congress, nor is personally recording and 1099ing all church donations, including cash gifts, going to be viable. All that can be realistly done is to make churches and ministries more accountable. One problem with that is that many of the ministries are preacher-centered to the point where there is no outside supervision, no denomination or church board to keep a leader honest.

__________

Bene blogged on this news item yesterday-

With more prosperity teaching coming into Canada with Love World Christian Network Inc. (LoveworldCan) licensed by the CRTC [Canada's analogue to the FCC],  it’s difficult to complain about what the US isn’t doing to stem the tide of this poison.

I'm not sure what legally can be done to provide a legal anti-venom. The First Amendment would preclude shutting churches down for bad theology, tempting as that might be; the Charter of Rights would likely give them the same cover in Canada. You really wouldn't want to give the government that power, since the state religion isn't likely to be yours.

As long as they don't break any laws, there is little that the government can do short of doing some sort of Fairness Doctrine game making religious cable channels carry a variety of programming rather than be all-Pentecostal or all-Catholic. Even there, televangelists with a following could move to webcasts of their services and keep the action going there; the Todd Bentley Lakeland fiasco was mostly Web-driven rather than TV-driven.

Big salaries aren't illegal. Bad theology isn't illegal. Heart-tugging pitches for money aren't illegal. Tacky, no doubt. But they're not illegal and aren't likely to be.

Hoke Gets In Your Eyes

UofM got their Michigan Man^® today in former assistant and current SD State head coach Brady Hoke. He was a defensive line coach while at Ann Arbor and looks the part. He didn't have a stellar career at either SDSU or Ball State, but he is good on defense, understands the UofM tradition and is available.

All three are things Michigan needs. There wasn't much wrong with the Michigan offense last year. The offensive coordinator might be someone that Hoke might opt to retain. He's got a Heisman Trophy candidate in Denard Robinson coming back and has a well-regarded kicker to fill that gaping hole... we hope; they had a well-regarded kicker come in last year only to do a face-plant once he got in the Big House.

It's the defense that needs the overhaul. Greg Robinson has a good pedigree as an NFL defensive coach, but it didn't translate to the college level; he best have his resume ready. Hoke might opt to keep the DC portfolio for himself.

Les Miles would have been the big get, but moving to Michigan would be, sad to say, a downward move. LSU is set as a perennial top-20 team and he has the whole state of LA to himself as a football god. Michigan is a rebuilding project, albeit one that can be back in the top 25 in short order.

 

Dig Newton

It's rare when a title game lives up to the hype. Usually, college title games and Super Bowls are not as good as advertised, especially when you have a long stretch to wait for it.

Last night's 22-19 win for Auburn gave us a down-to-the-wire title game. It wasn't the track meet most folks expected (I saw an over-and-under listed of about 75, which was too generous by half as it turned out) but since both teams run a spread attack, their defences might have been used to it and defended it well.

I'm not sure what Cam Newton's future is. He's likely to go pro, given the cloud he was and still is under over his dad looking to get a signing bonus from that other MSU. If there are more probematic facts to come out, his college career is likely over.

However, I'm not sure what pro he will be. He's had one year of big time college experience, and in a set that is likely not to be duplicated at the NFL level. Newton can manhandle college safeties and linebackers as a runner, but won't have as easy of a time at the pro level. Also, I'm not sure if he has the football smarts to pick apart a pro defense.

He'll look mah-vel-lous at the Indy combine, but may be rather raw as an NFL QB prospect. Unlike a lot of running QBs, sliding him to WR isn't a great option; TE, maybe. If Tim Tebow was a late first rounder, Newton is likely a early second rounder, even with that cannon for an arm. Ryan Leaf and Akili Smith come to mind as guys with arms that required a concealed carry permit, but who didn't have the mentality to play at the next level.

The baggage he has at the college level, both from Bonusgate and seemingly flunking out of UF, might not help, either. However, a team with a gap at QB and a willingness to roll the dice on a long term project could snag him either late in the first round or early in the second.

Preventing Crazies

Toning down the political rhetoric is the issue of the day, but popular conservatives don't seem to be the problem here. Our shooter wasn't saying anything about Beck or Palin or Rush or any of the usual suspects of the right.Rock and rap have nihilistic wings that seemed to have been more an inspiration than any media talker, but there aren't political points to be made by bashing them.

Demonizing your foes is not cool, given that the foe isn't usually the Devil himself. However, that isn't the problem; most murders of this type are done by people who aren't emotionally playing with a full deck and need help.

I'm not sure if the tone of our political discussions are going to change the number of attacks on public officials. Oklahoma City is about the only major piece of political terrorism that was right of center. Most everything else was either crazed (both shots at Ford, Reagan and Tuscon) or of the left (both Kennedies and Truman) with only King's assassination being a "right-wing" thing if you can chalk up racism as a conservative thing.

It doesn't seem that our shooter in Tuscon was coherently conservative; he seemed of the left more than of the right but with an anarchic, nihilistic streak that was more psychotic than political. The solution there would be to do more to get edgy folks into psych treatment sooner, but civil liberties issues crop up there, as it's hard to deem folks to be a danger to others before they actually act out on their thoughts.

Such aggressive treatment of violent-leaning personalities would require spending more resources on mental health and making the laws in that area less libertarian so to make it easier to force marginal folks into treatment. That will tick off both sides of the aisle, as it spends more money and makes the ACLU types nervous.

The New Sugar Daddies

Here's an interesting story out of northern Canada, where one local mining company is looking to buy out another, but doesn't have the cash to do it and is looking for Chinese help in financing the deal.

Baffinland Iron Mines suitor Nunavut Iron Ore is seeking backing for its bid from deep-pocketed Chinese investors, sources say.

Getting involved in a fast-moving hostile takeover battle is not viewed as something that generally interests Chinese investors, but sources said that hasn't stopped Nunavut from approaching potential backers that could help the company compete with ArcelorMittal's cash offer for all of Baffinland.

Chinese investors have been keen on snapping up natural resources, including ore. From investing in the Australia outback to the Inuit side of the old Northwest Territories, Chinese investors are looking to feed their industrial machine and make friends while they do it.

Such activities are more political in developing countries, where investment in local infrastructure can make friends at the UN, but extending those deep pockets to US allies like Canada and Australia can erode US influence. That's not to say that every deal done by a Chinese company has an ulterior motive, but Chinese "soft power" in world finance is a force to be dealt with.

Cold Turkey Budgeting

One of the upcoming fights on Capital Hill is raising the federal debt ceiling. The Obama team is running scared, warning of the dire problems that would result if the debt ceiling isn't raised.

Many conservatives have argued for a balance-budget requirement in the Constitution but have never gotten the super-majority needed to get it done. Failing to raise the debt ceiling would effectively create a balanced budget, since if you can't borrow any more money, the budgets have to be either balanced or running a surplus.

If the government doesn't want to default on its debts, a combination of budget cuts and tax increases are the most likely option. If painted into a corner, the current administration would be faced with slashing spending to the marrow, since they can't unilaterally raise taxes. They might opt to go with a default in a game of budgetary Chicken rather than cut spending.

What is likely is some combination of budget cuts and increased debt ceiling. Another option would be to borrow from Jerry Brown's proposed CA budget and zero out the deficit with a 50-50 mix of tax increases and spending cuts; that will see to some budget hawks on the right but not with the Tea Party crowd.

Golng cold turkey on debt would not be pretty. It might be a good thing for the long term, but it would be ugly for the near-term, not unlike the Fed's actions in the stagflation era, jacking up interest rates in order to wring inflation out of the system; the result was uglier than what we've just went through in the last 2+ years.

 

Edifier du Jour: Acts1:6-8(NIV)

⁶ Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

⁷ He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. ⁸ But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

There's a growth industry in micro-prophecy, noting every page in the newspaper as one more piece of evidence that Jesus' return is right around the corner. True, most of those folks aren't predicting dates, but they wind up focusing on when He's coming back rather that what we're to do in the meantime.

That follows in verse 8; we're to represent him wherever we are. People get juiced about the "ends of the earth" part, but we're also to do so in our own back yard, if we put ourselves in the spots of the disciples.

50-50

Jerry Brown's getting down to business and seems to be splitting things down the middle between budget cuts and tax increases-

The Democratic governor released his first budget proposal since winning election last fall. He called for $12.5 billion in spending cuts, including reductions in welfare, social services, health care for the poor and a combined $1 billion cut to the University of California and California State University systems.

Brown also wants the Legislature to call a special election in June to give voters an opportunity to continue hikes in the income, sales and vehicle taxes for five years. His proposal relies on new revenues of $12 billion.

The governor's office said the only area of state spending he would protect is K-12 education.

He could have cut high school spending and protected K-9 education, but that plan is for the dogs.

Students will scream, and the state workers unions will she-dog, but he's not going to get it done all with tax increases, especially when you need a 2/3rds majority with a lot of Republicans needed to pass a budget. The big question is whether the voters will go along with the tax increases; if they don't, Brown will be be like Bob Rae in Ontario, where he becomes persona non grata in his own party for doing the budget cuts needed to balance the budget.

As much as it's easy to kick around "Gov. Moonbeam", Brown could use some prayers and some slack; he's more honest than most pols and has a lousy hand to play. We don't want to see CA become a total basket case that requires some sort of federal take-ver.

Punjabi Good-ol'-Boys

We've got Indian conservatives running LA and SC at present and may have a Punjabi good-ol'-boy running British Columbia if things break right there.

Veteran MLA Harry Lali declared himself the tribune of “older white males” as he entered the race to lead B.C.’s New Democrats with a promise to hold the line against gender-equity policies that he said cost the party seats in the last election.

Launching his campaign in Merritt on Thursday, the Indian-born Mr. Lali dubbed equity quotas “an affront to democracy,” and said he would “welcome back older, white males into our NDP family” if he becomes party leader when New Democrats vote on April 17.

It's somewhat ironic when an Indian-Canadian serving as multiculturalism critic winds up playing the good-ol'-boy card. However, there are a lot of blue-collar guys who vote for a party that is the classic labor party of Canada; the NDP is the main party of the left in BC politics, so it is a bit less leftist than its federal analogue. Those people might not be thrilled with having to play quotas with everything.

What makes this notable is that Indians are enough of the Candian landscape where they can essentially go native and not see themselves as much as ethnic candidates. There's already been one Indian-Canadian BC NDP premier in Ujjal Dosanjh who's now a Liberal MP in Ottawa. Having a second one who can appeal to swing voters might not be far in the offing.

You Can't Change the Laws of Democratic Physics

Here's an interesting story out of Illinois, where the recession has left revenues down and spending up-

Gov. Pat Quinn and the leaders of both houses of the Illinois General Assembly have agreed on raising the state income tax.

If the bill passes, the plan would raise the personal income tax rate from the current 3 percent to 5.25 percent. That’s a 75 percent increase. In real dollars, that would mean if you currently owe $1,000 in taxes, next year you would owe $1,750.

...

Democrats say they have no choice but to raise taxes as one part of a solution to Illinois’ massive budget crisis. The state deficit could reach $15 billion in the coming year. The government is borrowing money to cover some obligations, letting bills go unpaid for months and cutting corners everywhere from state prisons to state parks.

Well, they could.... cut spending. They do have a choice, but to do so would anger their constituents too much. Thus, by definition as Democrats, they have no choice, since there is a floor of government services that Democrats have to support as Democrats. Republican physics is different.

Rental properties in Kenosha and Gary are going to do a brisk business as firms look to bug out of the IL part of Metro Chicago.

 

Assume a Ladder

That's what an economist does when he falls into a hole. Sadly, the President isn't an economist-

Obama noted that there have now been 12 months of private-sector job growth for the first time since 2006.

"We've got a big hole that we're digging ourselves out of," he said.

You climb out of holes. If you are digging, you are going further down, unless your plan is to go all the way to China and save on shipping time for new exports.

Midday Musings

I was a bit suprised to have a local angle to the Tuscon shooting, but Midland has one of the LA Dodgers' farm clubs, and one of guys from our new church and knows the father of the girl killed in the shooting who happens to be a Dodger scout based out of Tuscon. Seven degrees of seperation rides again.

_____________

Might there be a Ford in Canada's future? Toronto has a new right-leaning mayor, Rob Ford, and he's having to do the tricky work of clearing up a budget deficit without raising taxes. Firning department heads who don't find cuts is his new gambit. I'm getting a bit of a Chris Christy (NJ's hard-nosed governor) vibe from Ford, who might give the Tories a good name in Toronto and its suburbs if he plays his cards right; winning ridings there might mean the difference between another plurality government and a majority one that wouldn't require having an opposition party come on board for every key vote.

______________

Here's an interesting poll putting Mike Huckabee down as the most-liked of the prospective 2012 candidates. Despite all the work the MSM have done, Palin only has a 8% unfavorable rating among right-of-center voters. She has 95% name recognition, which makes me wonder what universe the other 5% have been in for the last 30 months.

_____________

The new Michigan coach might describe the length of my telecommute to work-Les Miles. He is now officially on Ann Arbor's radar with a talk pending later this week.

___________

On a less savory note, we have the beginnings of a border war between North and South Sudan; the southern part is voting on independence, and there has been some violence in the Abyei no-mans-land region that both sides claim. We might have a poor new country that the west has to help garrison if this keeps up.

Rip R.I.P.?

It's looking more like a Carmelo Anthony deal to the Nets is going to go down, with Richard Hamilton being part of the deal. The previous piece on the deal had the Pistons sending a #1 to New Jersey, but their half of the deal is now Hamilton (and possible unused rookie Terrico White) to Joisey for Troy Muphy and Johan Petro and a Nets #1.

Murphy is supposedly looking to be bought out of his contract, but he could be a serviceable big off the bench or even starting if he can be talked into relocating to Motown. His contract is up at the end of the year, so the Pistons and any new owner can retool with two near-max contract slots and a spare first-round pick.

This might not help the Pistons much in 2011, but it sets up a potentially fruitful off-season.

Edifier du Jour: Romans 13:1-2(NIV)

¹ Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. ² Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.

That passage was keyed up as the main reading for Sunday night's lesson before Saturday's shootings in Arizona.

Our young shooter from Saturday will likely have to answer to God as well as state and federal authorities, for dissing your leaders is wrong, even if your leaders are wrong. However, he's not the only one in trouble when we look at this and ther remainder of Romans 13.

Verse seven goes on to add "Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor." I'm not talking here about "targeting" vulnerable congressmen at the ballot box and other military metaphors; our shooter from Saturday was off in far deeper fever swaps of the fringe than that.

It's the general lack of disrespect that we have for folks in authority. I'm more worried about Palin's crack about the president trying to wreck the economy on purpose than any second-amendment lingo. The hard left is also a cesspool of bile, with little respect for their political foes.

You can pass on military imagry and still do cutural damage by calling your foes the Worst Person Ever or make comparisons to despots of the past like Stalin or Hitler. I recall my short stint in boot camp; the seargants were forbidden from profanity, but they could make mundane words sound bad enough, like the therapist drill seargant calling his client a "jackwagon" in the insurance ad.

 

Edifier du Jour: Matthew 5:13(NIV)

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

Ted Haggard came to mind when we were discussing this passage in Sunday School this morning; he's now in the news for becoming part of the rolling freak show known as reality TV. Some are freakier than others, but one reason why the TLC folks would be comfortable with Haggard is that he gives modern evangelicals a bad name, or at least gave the tribe a bad name with his sexually-driven fall from prominence a few years ago; his fusion of economic and cultural conservatism is another problem, but that's not well known outside of people who follow the intersection of church and politics.

Can Haggard, or Todd Bentley (to name a more recent fallen Pentecostal leader) be properly brought back into ministry and, to extend Jesus' metaphor, get back their saltiness? In time, yes, but Haggard will always be the guy who had a boy-toy on the side while heading up the NAE and his own megachurch; Bentley will always be the guy who was [insert idiomatic term for sexual activity] an assistant not his wife while running his Lakeland revival.

In time, you can recover from such a fall. Chuck Colson has Watergate felon as the first line of his bio, but he's had a third of a century of Christian ministry to redeem the earlier mistake. However, he wasn't a Christian leader at the time, just a hard-nosed White House lawyer.

I recall one church friend from years ago. It was well into the time we knew them that we found out that he lost his job in a parachurch group from a small but illegal sexual offense. Most everyone else in his circle knew his story and also knew how he was an example in how to rebound from that. We just knew him as a really devout guy from church, so that with us, his saltiness wasn't called into question by us.

In an Internet era, those past issues are a Google search away if one bothered to look; for modern ministries, that will be part of due diligence in checking volunteers and workers. Thus, it is harder to start from scratch than it was in years past and harder to resalt yourself.

Politics by Other Means

Spooky. A federal judge got killed and a Democratic congresswoman was hit in the head in Arizona today. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is out of surgery but there is no word as to the extent of any brain damage.

Giffords was one of the Democrats not to vote for Nancy Pelosi for speaker, but is not overly conservative, with a career ACU rating of 15. Thus, it's unclear at present whether the shooter was venting from any particular ideology; two suspects are in custody.

Overall, five people died in the shootings at a town-hall type meeting in Tuscon and 14 more were shot. Keep the victims in prayer, and their families; Giffords' husband is a NASA astronaut due to go up to the space station later this year.

[Update 5:18- The shooting suspect, Jared Loughner, had a web presence. His YouTube entries and MySpace account cast him as a fringe mentality that is anarchist in tone, with both left and right seasoning. He was a gold standard bug that had Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto down as favorite books. You try and get a coherent ideology out of that hodgepodge.]

Midday Musings

Georgia hasn't had good luck with their mascots as of late. I recall quipping about Uga when the Russo-Georgian conflict of 2008 flaired up; they were breaking in Uga 7 at the time, who wound up dying young.

Now, Uga 8 has lymphoma.

_______________

The Pistons are rumored to be part of Melo-to-the-Nets trade, which would send Chauncey Billups, Rip Hamilton and Melo to the Meadowlands, Favors and Devin Harris and two #1 to Denver (one each from NJ and Detroit) and Troy Murphy and Johan Petro to Motown.

Murphy for Rip would be a fair trade; Hamilton is still good but has lost a quarter of a step at a position that the Pistons are overstocked in, while Murphy is a power forward who can both rebound and shoot from long range. Murphy seems to be in the doghouse in Jersey and could use a change of scenery.

Petro is a journeyman seven-footer who might be a loose-change weight to throw on the capology scale. Rip and a #1 for Murphy and Petro seems like a bad deal for the Pistons, except that Murphy is only under contract through this year, while Rip has two years to go on his. That will give the Pistons two good salary slots coming loose this summer, as Tayshawn Prince's deal is up come June.

Is getting a near-max-deal cap slot a year early worth coughing up a first-rounder? In this era, you could make such a case. The Pistons could let Austin Daye be Prince 2.0 and have two big-money slots for a pair of free agent bigs to go with a solid pack of people at the 1-3 spots.

__________

Mexico starts getting messier and messier. Acapulco used to be the prime turista spot in Mexico, but a mass killing of 16 folks there today is unsettling. Fifteen of them were left decapitated by a non-touristy shopping center.

We're starting to get to the point where the drug gangs are becoming a national security issue for us, where they seem more like the Taliban or Columbia's FARC where they take over wide swaths of the country and turn them into a safe haven for the traffickers.

The good news for the US is since drug gangs are mostly in it for the money, they will be somewhat easier to roll up. It might take some sort of Iraq-level occupation by the US and other outsiders to clean up the corruption and have law enforcement that can't be scared off, killed off or bought off.

 

Edifier du Jour: Micah 5:1-2(NIV)

¹ Marshal your troops, O city of troops, for a siege is laid against us. They will strike Israel’s ruler on the cheek with a rod.

² “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”

This is one of the common messianic passages cited in the New Testiment, but I didn't catch the tail end of verse 2-"whose origins are from of old, from ancient times." That definitely fits Jesus as the Word who was with God at the begining as John 1 reminds us.

Micah switches between reading the Riot Act to Israel and promicing better days ahead; that's good to remember when we go through bad stretches in life.

One translation nit to pick; some translations put quote marks around verse 2 and some don't. I don't have a good answer for that divergance.

Nine Candles

The first post on this blog (or at least the Blogger version of it) went up nine years ago today.

A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. I've gotten married, lived in three new states, been Dr. Byron at three colleges, and met a truckload of people online.

A lot of the people that were part of things nine years ago have moved on, while others have become part of the Peanut Gallery. Things are slower than they were in their prime back in 2003, but there are more people writing online these days (who isn't?) and things like Facebook and Twitter have snagged some of the blog eyeball market, as has a lot of professional reporters and pundits blogging as part of their job.

Even if the readership is 40 a day rather than 160, I'm still a blogger. I'm a bit verbose to fit a thought into a tweet and don't have a book in me, so the short-essay format that fits blogging to a T is my natural home.

I'm going to strive to write more in the weeks and months to come. I've brought the Edifiers back; the last few years have been a spiritual dry time, and bringing them back has lifted my spirit. Many readers have apprecated them in the past, and I want to keep them up.

Also, with some free time on my hands as a part-time tutor, I hope to use that time to put my ecclective thoughts in print and see what the Blogosphere and the Web thinks of them. I don't know if I can get things to a point where this can be self-supporting, but I can at least put my $0.02 out there in areas of my interest and expertise.

Here's to year ten's start.

Wild Grizzly

There is a fine line between political hyperbole and bearing false witness; sadly, it looks like Sarah Palin has crossed that line.

Sarah Palin is charging that President Barack Obama is “hell-bent on weakening America” by pushing to raise the national debt ceiling.

“What I believe that Obama is doing right now — he is hell-bent on weakening America,” the possible 2012 Republican contender said Friday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

She accused the president of “purposefully” trying to harm the country and acknowledged that her stinging comments might “get some people all wee-weed up again.”

Is he harming the country? I think so.

Is he trying to harm the country? I think not.

It doesn't help that she was on a conservative talk show where such uncharitable hyperbole is stock in trade; such lines will be greeted with high-fives by the listeners. However, if Ms. Palin is correct in that the President of the United States is deliberately trashing the country, she should either present concrete proof of such premeditation or retract that statement.

Yes, some folks on the hard left have posited the tactic of trashing the status quo so bad that their preferred ideology looks like a viable alternative. Some of those folks have been in Obama's circle over the years; I can see the Glenn Beck chalkboard on that one in my mind.

However, it seems that Obama is an earnest leftist who is trying to make things better for the average American. It isn't working, but that doesn't mean he's sabotaging things on purpose.

One old saying is "Never chalk up to malice what can be better explained by stupidity." Or at least operating under a flawed economic paradigm, since Obama isn't dumb. People can be earnestly wrong and deserve the benefit of the doubt.

That's not the rhetoric I want in the White House. I'm far from clear on who I want to support for President next go-round, but this marks Palin as either mentally sloppy, disingenuous or both. It's especially not becoming of a Christian woman, or a Christian in general for that matter.

Ann Arbor's Plan B

We know who won't be coaching Michigan next year; Jim Harbaugh stays in the Bay Area, taking $5m per to coach the 49ers.

Here's another guy who won't be in the Big House next year unless it's as a color commentator; Mike Leach. He coached Text-us Tech's until last year, bringing down the ire of the NCAA. Bad habits tend to follow you from stop to stop; see RichRod and Kevin Samson. Leach might be a good Xs and Os guy who ran a spread-style offence, but there was a reason the powers that be in Lubbock ran him off a year ago.

Everyone seems to have their list; Mike Stoops at Arizona is one mentioned by the local sports talkers. He's not a Michigan Man^®,  but he might be the best available option. If Les Miles wants to come north to his alma mater, this might be the time to do so, but it is a lateral move for him.

General Pao's not Chicken

Here's an interesting obit for Hmong leader Vang Pao; he lead a group of Hmong soldiers against the North Vietnamese along the Laotian-Vietnamese border. A lot of Viet Cong supply lines ran into Laos, and the CIA-backed Hmong were instrumental in slowing down the North from taking over both southern Vietnam and Laos.

Unfortunately, they lost both those fights, as mid-70s Indochina went communist, with North Vietnam reunifying the country on their terms, then taking over Laos in 1975 and Cambodia a few years later. A large chunk of Hmong then immigrated to the US and other countries, with Pao dying in exile in Fresno.

The pre-Watergate era CIA is a favorite whipping boy of the left, so anyone who was working for the CIA and using Air America as their airline of choice looks corrupt from that vantage point. However, even the left-leaning BBC seems to cast Pao as a Hmong patriot, looking to fend off both Japanese and Vietnamese colonialists.

Pao came from the "He's an SOB, but he's our SOB" era, Pao seems to deserve better than to be categorized as such. Some of the anti-communists were legit, and he seems to have been one of them.