Restoring Public Faith Will Require Full Investigation of IRS Politicization

From Peggy Noonan, at WSJ, "An Antidote to Cynicism Poisoning":

The Benghazi scandal was and is shocking, and the Justice Department assault on the free press, in which dogged reporters are tailed like enemy spies, is shocking. Benghazi is still under investigation and someday someone will write a great book about it. As for the press, Attorney General Eric Holder is on the run, and rightly so. They called it the First Amendment for a reason. But nothing can damage us more as a nation than what is happening at the Internal Revenue Service. Elite opinion in the press and in Washington doesn't fully understand this. Part of the reason is that it's not their ox being gored, it's those messy people out in America with their little patriotic groups.

Those who aren't deeply distressed about the IRS suffer from a reluctance or inability to make distinctions, and a lack of civic imagination.

An inability to make distinctions: "It's always been like this." "Presidents are always siccing the IRS on their enemies." There's truth in that. We've all heard the stories of the president who picked up the phone and said, "Look into this guy," Richard Nixon most showily. He got clobbered for it. It was one of the articles of impeachment.

But this scandal is different and distinctive. The abuse was systemic—from the sheer number of targets and the extent of each targeting we know many workers had to be involved, many higher-ups, multiple offices. It was ideological and partisan—only those presumed to be of one political view were targeted. It has a single unifying pattern: The most vivid abuses took place in the years leading up to the president's 2012 re-election effort. And in the end several were trying to cover it all up, including the head of the IRS, who lied to Congress about it, and the head of the tax-exempt unit, Lois Lerner, who managed to lie even in her public acknowledgment of impropriety.

It wasn't a one-off. It wasn't a president losing his temper with some steel executives. There was no enemies list, unless you consider half the country to be your enemies...

Continue reading.

Teen Driver Hit Speeds of Over 100 MPH in Fatal Newport Beach Crash

Lots a new details on the crash.

At LAT, "Teen driver in fatal O.C. crash may have been going 100 mph."

Also, "Teen driver in fatal Newport Beach wreck was unlicensed":

The 17-year-old high school student who was at the wheel when his car spun out of control in a horrific Memorial Day crash in Newport Beach did not have a valid driver's license, according to DMV records.

The crash left five teens dead, all high school students from Irvine. Two sisters were among the casualties.

Police said speed was a contributing factor to the wreck. Investigators didn't say how fast the teen's Infiniti was going, but the mayor in the beach city said he was told the car may have been traveling at 100 mph or faster.

The driver of the car, identified as Abdulrahman M. Alyahyan, received a citation in April for violating his provisional license, among other offenses, court records showed.

The high school junior, records show, was pulled over just blocks from his Irvine home and cited for making a prohibited modification to the exhaust system of his gray 2008 Infiniti — which bore the personalized license plate "KHASONA" — and having tinted windows that obstructed the driver's view.

Although the citation lists a driver's license number, a DMV official said that number actually corresponded with Alyahyan's application for a license.

The single-car crash occurred on a downhill stretch of Jamboree Road where the posted speed limit is 55 mph. It's less than a mile from the spot where the co-founder of mixed martial arts apparel company TapouT was killed in 2009 when his Ferrari was struck by a Porsche traveling at 100 mph.

Four in 10 Households Now Have Women as Primary Breadwinner

The fact that women are primary breadwinners is non-controversial, in itself. What's controversial is the number of women who are single parents, so that children are denied the benefits of a stable two-parent family with one mother and one father.

At the New York Times, "U.S. Women on the Rise as Family Breadwinner":

Women are not only more likely to be the primary caregivers in a family. Increasingly, they are primary breadwinners, too.

Four in 10 American households with children under age 18 now include a mother who is either the sole or primary earner for her family, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census and polling data released Wednesday. This share, the highest on record, has quadrupled since 1960.

The shift reflects evolving family dynamics.

For one, it has become more acceptable and expected for married women to join the work force. It is also more common for single women to raise children on their own. Most of the mothers who are chief breadwinners for their families — nearly two-thirds — are single parents...

At the clip, Erick Erickson makes the extremely politically incorrect statement that men should be the "dominant" partner in the family relationship, and this has folks in a fit at Memeorandum. See Amanda Marcotte especially, "Watch the Men of Fox News Freak Out Over Female Breadwinners."

More at the link.

The Fiscal Cost of Amnesty to U.S. Taxpayers

From Robert Rector, at the Heritage Foundation, "The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer":

The governmental system is highly redistributive. Well-educated households tend to be net tax contributors: The taxes they pay exceed the direct and means-tested benefits, education, and population-based services they receive. For example, in 2010, in the whole U.S. population, households with college-educated heads, on average, received $24,839 in government benefits while paying $54,089 in taxes. The average college-educated household thus generated a fiscal surplus of $29,250 that government used to finance benefits for other households.

Other households are net tax consumers: The benefits they receive exceed the taxes they pay. These households generate a “fiscal deficit” that must be financed by taxes from other households or by government borrowing. For example, in 2010, in the U.S. population as a whole, households headed by persons without a high school degree, on average, received $46,582 in government benefits while paying only $11,469 in taxes. This generated an average fiscal deficit (benefits received minus taxes paid) of $35,113.

The high deficits of poorly educated households are important in the amnesty debate because the typical unlawful immigrant has only a 10th-grade education. Half of unlawful immigrant households are headed by an individual with less than a high school degree, and another 25 percent of household heads have only a high school degree.
Some argue that the deficit figures for poorly educated households in the general population are not relevant for immigrants. Many believe, for example, that lawful immigrants use little welfare. In reality, lawful immigrant households receive significantly more welfare, on average, than U.S.-born households. Overall, the fiscal deficits or surpluses for lawful immigrant households are the same as or higher than those for U.S.-born households with the same education level. Poorly educated households, whether immigrant or U.S.-born, receive far more in government benefits than they pay in taxes.

In contrast to lawful immigrants, unlawful immigrants at present do not have access to means-tested welfare, Social Security, or Medicare. This does not mean, however, that they do not receive government benefits and services. Children in unlawful immigrant households receive heavily subsidized public education. Many unlawful immigrants have U.S.-born children; these children are currently eligible for the full range of government welfare and medical benefits. And, of course, when unlawful immigrants live in a community, they use roads, parks, sewers, police, and fire protection; these services must expand to cover the added population or there will be “congestion” effects that lead to a decline in service quality.

In 2010, the average unlawful immigrant household received around $24,721 in government benefits and services while paying some $10,334 in taxes. This generated an average annual fiscal deficit (benefits received minus taxes paid) of around $14,387 per household. This cost had to be borne by U.S. taxpayers. Amnesty would provide unlawful households with access to over 80 means-tested welfare programs, Obamacare, Social Security, and Medicare. The fiscal deficit for each household would soar.

If enacted, amnesty would be implemented in phases. During the first or interim phase (which is likely to last 13 years), unlawful immigrants would be given lawful status but would be denied access to means-tested welfare and Obamacare. Most analysts assume that roughly half of unlawful immigrants work “off the books” and therefore do not pay income or FICA taxes. During the interim phase, these “off the books” workers would have a strong incentive to move to “on the books” employment. In addition, their wages would likely go up as they sought jobs in a more open environment. As a result, during the interim period, tax payments would rise and the average fiscal deficit among former unlawful immigrant households would fall.

After 13 years, unlawful immigrants would become eligible for means-tested welfare and Obamacare. At that point or shortly thereafter, former unlawful immigrant households would likely begin to receive government benefits at the same rate as lawful immigrant households of the same education level. As a result, government spending and fiscal deficits would increase dramatically.

The final phase of amnesty is retirement. Unlawful immigrants are not currently eligible for Social Security and Medicare, but under amnesty they would become so. The cost of this change would be very large indeed.

Continue reading.

And at WaPo, "What amnesty for illegal immigrants will cost America."

Pakistan Says U.S. Drone Killed Taliban Leader

Well, so much for that war on terror reset.

At the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Less than a week after President Obama outlined a new direction for the secret drone wars, Pakistani officials said that a C.I.A. missile strike on Wednesday killed a top member of the Pakistani Taliban, an attack that illustrated the continued murkiness of the rules that govern the United States’ targeted killing operations.

The drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal belt, along the Afghan border, was the first since Mr. Obama announced what his administration billed as sweeping changes to the drone program, with new limits on who would be targeted and more transparency in reporting such strikes.

But in the days since the president’s speech, American officials have asserted behind the scenes that the new standards would not apply to the C.I.A. drone program in Pakistan as long as American troops remained next door in Afghanistan — a reference to Mr. Obama’s exception for an “Afghan war theater.” For months to come, any drone strikes in Pakistan — the country that has been hit by the vast majority of them, with more than 350 such attacks by some estimates — will be exempt from the new rules.

American officials refused to publicly confirm the drone strike or the death of the Pakistani Taliban’s deputy leader, Wali ur-Rehman, even as Pakistani government and militant figures reported that he had been killed. Thus, the promise of new transparency, too, seemed to be put off.

Still, by one measure, Mr. Rehman would seem to fit the new road map for drone strikes: the threshold laid out by Mr. Obama that the target of the strike pose a “continuing and imminent threat” to United States citizens...

Yeah, that's a pretty convenient exception.

More from Max Boot, at Commentary, "Taliban Strike Exposes Flaw in Proposed Drone Guidelines."

Western Cultural Suicide

From VDH, at National Review:

Multiculturalism — as opposed to the notion of a multiracial society united by a single culture — has become an abject contradiction in the modern Western world. Romance for a culture in the abstract that one has rejected in the concrete makes little sense. Multiculturalists talk grandly of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, usually in contrast to the core values of the United States and Europe. Certainly, in terms of food, fashion, music, art, and architecture, the Western paradigm is enriched from other cultures. But the reason that millions cross the Mediterranean to Europe or the Rio Grande to the United States is for something more that transcends the periphery and involves fundamental values — consensual government, free-market capitalism, the freedom of the individual, religious tolerance, equality between the sexes, rights of dissent, and a society governed by rationalism divorced from religious stricture. Somehow that obvious message has now been abandoned, as Western hosts lost confidence in the very society that gives us the wealth and leisure to ignore or caricature its foundations. The result is that millions of immigrants flock to the West, enjoy its material security, and yet feel little need to bond with their adopted culture, given that their hosts themselves are ambiguous about what others desperately seek out....

At no time in our history have so many Americans been foreign born. Never have so many foreign nationals resided in America, and never have so many done so illegally. Yet at just such a critical time, in our universities and bureaucracies, the pressures to assimilate in melting-pot fashion have been replaced by salad-bowl separatism — as if the individual can pick and choose which elements of his adopted culture he will embrace, which he will reject, as one might croutons or tomatoes. But ultimately he can do that because he senses that the American government, people, press, and culture reward such opportunism and have no desire, need, or ability to defend the very inherited culture that has given them the leeway to ignore it and so attracted others from otherwise antithetical paradigms.

That is a prescription for cultural suicide, if not by beheading or by a pressure cooker full of ball bearings, at least by making the West into something that no one would find very different from his homeland.

RTWT.

Michelle Fields Just Eviscerates Tamara Holder Over Idiot Adam Levine's 'I Hate This Country' Comment

I love it!

And Sean Hannity bet Holder $100 to name one conservative how said "I hate this country."

Also at Twitchy, "Adam Levine caught on hot mic: ‘I hate this country’; Responds to backlash with douche-tweets; Update: Blames ‘frustration’ for comments."

Chinese Baby Flushed Down Toilet

This story is so unbelievably depraved...

At Mirror UK, "Chinese baby flushed down toilet: Mum tells police miracle boy FELL into sewage pipe."

And at the Washington Times, "Chinese mom who flushed newborn down toilet won't be charged."

Stop Drinking the 'Haterade'

Via Theo Spark:

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell Slams Obama With Epic New Campaign Ad

Via Legal Insurrection, "IRS targeting — Remember it in November 2014."

GOP Already Tried the Bob Dole Paradigm

From Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary:

To say that Dole passed his best-used date is not to mock him for his age or infirmity. The fact that he is wheelchair-bound and losing his sight should grieve us all. He is the exemplar of the “greatest generation” veteran who nearly died as a result of his wounds and then spent nearly four decades in public life in the postwar era. He deserves every possible honor that his country can give him. But let’s get real. Dole was also an apt symbol of the failures of the self-proclaimed Eisenhower Republicans in Congress. His get-along-to-go-along style in which compromise always seemed to be the keynote was never going to fix the out-of-control growth of the federal government, it just managed it. As much as the abrasiveness of Ted Cruz makes many of us long for the more easygoing style of partisanship Dole practiced, there was a reason the GOP abandoned it: it didn’t work.

Continue reading.

The Dems, of course, cream on that kind of pathetic concern trolling, at the clip, for example.

Saint Kate Updates

Robert Stacy McCain reports, at the American Spectator, "#FreeKate Insanity Intensifies: Is Teen Lesbian the Rosa Parks of Jailbait?"

And at the Other McCain, "Quite Possibly the Most Eloquent Sentence of My Entire Journalism Career."

Obama Was Plotting Benghazi Cover Story Before Last Two Americans Were Dead

Via Noisy Room:

Obligatory Blog Post on Michele Bachmann's 8-Minutes-Plus Congressional Retirement Video

Look, I love Michele Bachmann. She was my candidate for the Republican nomination in 2012. But this retirement clip is a bit much. She could have had as much to say in a couple of minutes. And frankly, the long spin on her congressional accomplishments highlights something of the lack thereof. Her most important impact has been as a media star, and she might have done better in the primaries had she avoided her Human Papilloma Virus gaffe of September 2011. I will say though, I think she's wise not to leave public life altogether. She's a powerful voice of dissent and we need as many of those as we can get.

Ed Morrissey has more, "Video: Michele Bachmann retires."

BONUS: Get a kick out of WaPo's report, which is basically a DLTDHYOTWO screed against the Minnesota Republican, "Rep. Bachmann will not run for reelection in 2014."

Africa's Economic Boom

An excellent piece, from Shantayanan Devarajan and Wolfgang Fengler, at Foreign Affairs, "Why the Pessimists and the Optimists Are Both Right":

Talk to experts, academics, or businesspeople about the economies of sub-Saharan Africa and you are likely to hear one of two narratives. The first is optimistic: Africa’s moment is just around the corner, or has already arrived. Reasons for hope abound. Despite the global economic crisis, the region’s GDP has grown rapidly, averaging almost five percent a year since 2000, and is expected to rise even faster in the years ahead. Many countries, not just the resource-rich ones, have participated in the boom: indeed, 20 states in sub-Saharan Africa that do not produce oil managed average GDP growth rates of four percent or higher between 1998 and 2008. Meanwhile, the region has begun attracting serious amounts of private capital; at $50 billion a year, such flows now exceed foreign aid.

At the same time, poverty is declining. Since 1996, the average poverty rate in sub-Saharan African countries has fallen by about one percentage point a year, and between 2005 and 2008, the portion of Africans in the region living on less than $1.25 a day fell for the first time, from 52 percent to 48 percent. If the region’s stable countries continue growing at the average rates they have enjoyed for the last decade, most of them will reach a per capita gross national income of $1,000 by 2025, which the World Bank classifies as “middle income.” The region has also made great strides in education and health care. Between 2000 and 2008, secondary school enrollment increased by nearly 50 percent, and over the past decade, life expectancy has increased by about ten percent.

The second narrative is more pessimistic. It casts doubt on the durability of Africa’s growth and notes the depressing persistence of its economic troubles. Like the first view, this one is also justified by compelling evidence. For one thing, Africa’s recent growth has largely followed rising commodity prices, and commodities make up the overwhelming share of its exports -- never a stable prospect. Indeed, the pessimists argue that Africa is simply riding a commodities wave that is bound to crest and fall and that the region has not yet made the kind of fundamental economic changes that would protect it when the downturn arrives. The manufacturing sector in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, currently accounts for the same small share of overall GDP that it did in the 1970s. What’s more, despite the overall decline in poverty, some rapidly growing countries, such as Burkina Faso, Mozambique, and Tanzania, have barely managed to reduce their poverty rates. And although most of Africa’s civil wars have ended, political instability remains widespread: in the past year alone, Guinea-Bissau and Mali suffered coups d’état, renewed violence rocked the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and fighting flared on the border between South Sudan and Sudan. At present, about a third of sub-Saharan African countries are in the throes of violent conflict.

More mundane problems also take a heavy toll. Much of Africa suffers from rampant corruption, and most of its infrastructure is in poor condition. Many governments struggle to provide basic services: teachers in Tanzania’s public primary schools are absent 23 percent of the time, and government-employed doctors in Senegal spend an average of only 39 minutes a day seeing patients. Such deficiencies will become only more pronounced as Africa’s population booms.

And then there’s the fact that African countries, especially those that are rich in resources, often fall prey to what the economist Daron Acemoglu and the political scientist James Robinson have termed “extractive institutions”: policies and practices that are designed to capture the wealth and resources of a society for the benefit of a small but politically powerful elite. One result is staggering inequality, the effects of which are often masked by positive growth statistics.

What should one make of all the contradictory evidence? At first glance, these two narratives seem irreconcilable. It turns out, however, that both are right, or at least reflect aspects of a more complex reality, which neither fully captures. The skeptics focus so much on the region’s commodity exports that they fail to grasp the extent to which its recent growth is a result of economic reforms (many of which were necessitated by the misguided policies of the past). The optimists, meanwhile, underestimate the degree to which the region’s remaining problems -- such as sclerotic institutions, low levels of education, and substandard health care -- reflect government failures that will be very difficult to overcome because they are deeply rooted in political conflict.

However, even if both narratives are reductive, the optimists’ view of Africa’s future is ultimately closer to the mark and more likely to be borne out by developments in the coming decades. Africa will continue to face daunting obstacles on its ongoing path to prosperity, especially when it comes to improving its human capital: the education, skills, and health of its population. But the success of recent reforms and the increased openness of its societies, fueled in part by new information and communications technologies, give Africa a good chance of enjoying sustained growth and poverty reduction in the decades to come.

Continue reading.

The authors argue that the continent is leapfrogging some stages of technological progress, going right to the cellular era --- "the so-called mobile revolution" --- bypassing a long, plodding period of telecommunications development.

Postal Service On its Last Legs

I was just talking about this yesterday during my lectures on the federal bureaucracy, at the Los Angeles Times, "Postal Service is on its last legs, with little help in sight":

WASHINGTON — With a wide grin and a quick step, letter carrier Kenny Clark brings more than the day's mail to the people on his route in suburban Maryland.

Clark, 49, greets nearly everyone he sees by name. He puts packages under eaves on overcast days to keep them dry, reminds people to retrieve keys they might have left in keyholes, and shouts a quick "You OK?" at the doors of seniors.

"He's a neighborhood icon — him and his truck," said Amy Dick, who lives on Clark's route.

But his future, and that of the U.S. Postal Service, is in doubt. The Postal Service lost $1.9 billion between January and March, and $15.9 billion last year. The 238-year-old institution loses $25 million each day, and has reached its borrowing limit with the federal Treasury. Daily mail delivery could be threatened within a year, officials say.

Americans increasingly go online to write letters, pay bills and read magazines, and mail volume has fallen by a quarter since 2006, according to the Government Accountability Office. The decline is expected to continue.

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has reduced staff, consolidated mail facilities and lowered express delivery standards in an effort to cut spending. But the savings have not been enough to match the drop in revenue.

"We are in real trouble, and we need comprehensive postal reform yesterday," Mickey Barnett, chairman of the Postal Service Board of Governors, told a congressional committee last month.

The Postal Service is a government corporation, which means it is organized like a business yet subject to congressional oversight. Consequently, reform is difficult, said Mike Schuyler, a fellow at the Washington-based Tax Foundation who has studied postal issues for nearly two decades.

"The Postal Service has far too little flexibility when it needs to adjust, and it's really in handcuffs because of all the requirements Congress puts on it," Schuyler said.

Postal officials recently tried to end Saturday letter delivery, which could have saved $2 billion per year, but Congress blocked it. A legislative proposal to replace doorstep delivery with curbside delivery, which would save $4.5 billion, failed last year. A plan to close thousands of rural post offices was abandoned after postal officials deemed the closures would "upset Congress a great deal," Barnett said.

More problems mentioned at the link, like "pre-funding" of pensions for postal workers. Yeah. That oughta work.

Irvine Devastated After 5 Teenagers Killed in High-Speed Crash

I gave my son a special hug as he left the apartment this morning. Kids were to wear white to school out of respect.

Now it's on the front-page of this morning's Los Angeles Times, "Friends mourn 5 Irvine teens killed in violent crash." Also, "Speed a factor in Newport Beach crash that killed five, police say."

Lakewood Honors Fallen Veterans on Memorial Day

From yesterday's Long Beach Press Telegram, "Memorial Day: Lakewood honors fallen veterans":

LAKEWOOD -- For many Americans, Memorial Day is a break from work, a day marked by barbecues and special sales.

Veterans, their families and others who gathered at Del Valle Park on Monday for Lakewood's annual Memorial Day ceremony see it differently, as a time to honor those who served their country and gave their lives so it may yet fulfill its promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Los Angeles County Department of Military and Veterans Affairs Chief Deputy Director Stephanie A. Stone noted a somber set of numbers from the last 100 years in her keynote address: more than 100,000 dead in World War I, 400,000 in World War II, 36,000 in the Korean War, 58,000 in Vietnam and 6,000 in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"This day is reserved for the men and women who were part of our lives," Stone said.

"The fathers and the mothers, the sisters and the brothers, the sons and the daughters who lived in our town, went to our schools, played with our children and prayed in our churches."

Lakewood Mayor Steve Croft suggested in his own remarks that the gratitude of the crowd should continue past the day's ceremony.

As a decade of war comes to an end, Croft said, the nation must support, encourage and nurture hundreds of thousands of veterans who need help restarting their lives.

"The challenges facing veterans today range from unemployment to homelessness, to mental, emotional and physical impacts that must be addressed," said Croft.

The mayor noted that many of Lakewood's earliest homebuyers in the 1950s were veterans who fought in World War II, and in a spirit of volunteerism, some founded the Lakewood Youth Sports program and did other work to build the city into what it is today.

"It's our turn now," Croft said, urging citizens to do what they can to ensure that veterans have access to education, jobs and other services so they may transition from war.

Too Much Money? Not With the Democrats in Sacramento There's Not

Governor Brown's purportedly holding out against the legislature's demands for even higher taxes, which the idiot Democrats covet for the further expansion of big government in the once-Golden State. But since state coffers are showing an unexpected surge in revenue, perhaps he'll be able to hold off the money grubbing leftists for now.

We'll see.

For now, here's the New York Times' report, "California Faces a New Quandary, Too Much Money":

LOS ANGELES — After years of grueling battles over state budget deficits and spending cuts, California has a new challenge on its hands: too much money. An unexpected surplus is fueling an argument over how the state should respond to its turn of good fortune.

The amount is a matter of debate, but by any measure significant: between $1.2 billion, projected by Gov. Jerry Brown, and $4.4 billion, the estimate of the Legislature’s independent financial analyst. The surplus comes barely three years after the state was facing a deficit of close to $60 billion.

At first glance, the situation should be welcome news in a state overwhelmingly controlled by Democrats, who have spent much of their time slashing programs they support. After last November’s elections, the party has two-thirds majorities in the Assembly and the Senate, relegating Republicans almost completely to the sidelines.

Instead, the surplus has set off a debate about the durability of new revenues, and whether the money should be used to reverse some of the spending cuts or set aside to guard against the inevitable next economic downturn.

At least seven other states — among them Connecticut, Utah and Wisconsin — have reported budget surpluses in recent weeks, setting the stage for legislative battles that, if not as wrenching as the ones over cuts, promise to be no less pitched. Lawmakers are debating whether the new money should be used to restore programs cut during the recession, finance tax cuts or put into a rainy-day fund for future needs.

The debate reflects uncertainty about whether the revenue is a one-time event, a result of state taxes on wealthy residents selling off investments at the end of last year to avoid increased costs as the Bush-era federal tax cuts expired. But it also illustrates philosophical differences about the role of government, about spending versus taxes and about the need, as Mr. Brown argued, to learn lessons from a decade in which many states saw the bottom fall out from their revenue collections.

“We’re seeing a change in conversation in state legislatures this year,” said Todd Haggerty, a policy analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures. “They’re not talking about how to close a budget gap anymore, which is a welcome relief after years of that during and after the Great Recession. Rather, states are having conversations about how to allocate increased revenues.”

Nowhere does that battle promise to play out with more force and intricacy than in California, the state that underwent perhaps the most severe retrenchments in the country.

Mr. Brown, a Democrat who has always had a fiscally conservative streak, is leading the don’t-pop-any-Champagne-corks brigade, saying that he would oppose significant increases in new spending and that the money should go into a rainy-day fund. His administration put out the lower $1.2 billion estimate.

“A good deal of the surge of revenues that we have seen since the beginning of the year is the result of higher-income individuals being able to realize some of their gains at the end of 2012,” said H. D. Palmer, the director of external affairs for the California Department of Finance. “We don’t believe it is prudent to budget on the capital gains. It wasn’t that long ago when we had the same experience during the dot-com boom. We don’t want to see that movie again.”

The idiot Democrats don't care about any of that. When you've got money coming in by the surplus, the left starts rummaging through is long buried list of "overdue" spending priorities. On this issue, I hope the governor wins.

Continue reading.

BONUS: At the Los Angeles Times, "California Assembly, Senate outline divergent budget plans."

#FreeKate — Kaitlyn Hunt is the Next Rosa Parks!

Hey, just hold back and let these idiots work themselves up into a frenzy of child molestation abominations. It's the new civil rights movement!

Via Jeanette Victoria on Twitter:

Right. I can just see Rosa Parks at the back of the bus fingering a 14-year-old.

Free at last!

Seriously, this is the caliber of "progressive" thinking on the left. We've got idiots like this in high office, so it's not very funny when you think about it.

BONUS: At Viral Read, "‘Beat Her Ass!’ Beach Fight Video Purports to Show Kaitlyn Hunt."