Considerettes

I’ve got an entry in this week’s Carnival of the Vanities, but there’s a whole lot more there worth reading.

(Carnival is run weekly on different blogs, and is a conglomeration of blog posts submitted by their authors. It’s a way to get noticed, which is, after all, one of the main results we like to get from a blog, eh? It was started by Silflay Hraka.)

Gov. Schwarzenegger’s State of the State speech needs to be incorporated into Bush’s State of the Union address. Some of my favorite parts:

When individuals overspend themselves into trouble, financial counselors often tell them to consolidate their credit card balances so they can work their way out of trouble – and also tear up their credit cards.

For California, this is referring to Arnold’s “California Recovery Plan”; rolling debt into a single bond, and passing a balanced budget amendment. The federal government desperately needs such a law.

These huge budget deficits are aftershocks of past financial recklessness.

What happened is this.

Over the last five years, the state’s income has increased 25 percent, but spending increased by 43 percent. This was irresponsible.

The fact of the matter is that we do not have a tax crisis; we do not have a budget crisis; we have a spending crisis.

We cannot tax our way out of this problem. More taxes will destroy what we are trying to save which is jobs and revenue.

Democrats (and the mainstream press), are you listening? This is exactly the same problem Washington’s having. No one (of you) ever talks about cutting spending, only about the taxation level. Look at both sides of the equation, will you?

We must make better use of the money that we spend on our schools.

My proposal gets more money into the classroom and thus increases per-pupil funding.

First, we must give local schools the power to meet the specific needs of their own communities.

We can do this by consolidating $2 billion of categorical programs and cutting the strings to Sacramento.

This will give schools the freedom to spend the money as they – not Sacramento – best see fit to serve the children.

Second, school districts are forced to spend an average of 10 to 40 percent more than necessary on non-classroom services.

We must give local schools the freedom to be more cost efficient.

Local solutions to local problems, what a concept! If it’s good for California, certainly it should be good for Washington, D.C. Conservatives have been preaching this for a good long time. Not only does it mean better solutions, but less cost as well.

We cannot afford waste and fraud in any department or agency.

Every governor proposes moving boxes around to reorganize government.

I don’t want to move the boxes around; I want to blow them up.

An apt analogy for the Terminator.

The executive branch of this government is a mastodon frozen in time and about as responsive.

This is not the fault of our public servants but of the system.

We have multiple departments with overlapping responsibilities. I say consolidate them.

We have boards and commissions that serve no pressing public need. I say abolish them.

We have a state purchasing program that is archaic and expensive. I say modernize it.

I plan a total review of government – its performance, its practices, its cost.

Al Gore’s “Reinventing Government” bit was supposed to do this at the federal level. All he did was rearrange it. Hopefully, Arnold will do better in California, and if he does, I hope Bush will take notice.

Best laugh line:

I am a salesman by nature. And now most of my energies will go into selling California. If you can sell, if I can sell tickets to my movies like “Red Sonja” or “Last Action Hero,” you know I can sell just about anything. California is the easiest sell I’ve ever had.

Go get ’em, Ahnold.

Nope, I just don’t buy it. Bush’s plan to pardon felons (read: grant legal status to illegal immigrants) if they get a job just doesn’t go over well with me. And explanations from the administration aren’t convincing me.

“We believe that this is an attractive program which will reduce the number of illegals here,” said one official who briefed reporters in a conference call.

Well sure it will, just like pardoning all thieves will reduce the number of thieves on the books. That doesn’t make what they did any better. Sorry, but all this does is cheapen the effort of those who immigrate legally, and poke more holes into our already porous borders.

This is political pandering, no doubt about it:

Bush’s re-election team would like to increase Hispanic support for a second term for the president, particularly in states where they could tip the balance in his favor, such as Florida and California.

Hispanic organizations said it was about time Bush addressed the issue after campaigning in 2000 for immigration reform.

Please note that conservatives are calling a spade a spade:

Conservatives were worried. Rep. Thomas Tancredo, a Colorado Republican who leads the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, a group of 70 legislators that argues for more restrictions, said an amnesty of any kind was a “step backwards.”

I just wish Democrats would be as honest about things like their motor-votor plan, or like when Gray Davis wanted to give legal drivers licenses to illegal aliens. Again, it’s conservatives that’ll be honest about this when their guy does it, while liberals will simply rally around theirs (Clinton’s impeachment-worthy lying being the penultimate example).

To all the naysayers who “naysaid” that the war in Iraq would destabilize the region, here’s a bit of news that would refute that:

(MENAFN) Almost all stock markets in the Arab world ended 2003 on a positive note. The Kuwait Stock Exchange, the best performing Arab stock market in 2003, closed the week on Wednesday up 1.68 percent to 4,790.20 points. The KSE closed the year up 101.6 percent.

The Saudi Tadawul All-Share Index (TASI) closed up 1.53 percent at 4,432.51 points. TASI, the largest in the Arab world in terms of capitalization, was also up a whopping 75.6 percent for the year. Oman’s MSM gained 0.6 percent to close at 274.13 points, while NBAD was also up 0.6 percent to close at 4,501.90 points. Bahrain’s BSE was up 0.5 percent on the week to close at 2,346.29 points.

To naysayers, just say “Nay”.

In 2003, Chicago has the most number of murders of any city in the nation. How can this be, when Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation? Alan Gottlieb of he Second Amendment Foundation has some observations:

Gottlieb called it “remarkable” that Chicago, New York and Los Angeles have some of the nation’s strictest gun laws, but even so, they still lead the nation when it comes to the number of homicides.

Gottlieb, in a press release, noted that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has made his “anti-gun philosophy” a cornerstone of his administration, to the detriment of the city.

He compared the situation in Chicago to that in Detroit, where the once-high murder rate has dropped to its lowest level in years.

“Two years ago,” Gottlieb noted, “Michigan reformed its concealed carry law, and today, thousands of law-abiding citizens in Michigan are legally armed. Gosh, do you suppose there is any correlation?”

Ya’ think?

When anti-war protestors have gone to Iraq, many times their minds have been changed (or opened). The experience of actually being there and better understanding the situation helps them see the error of supporting a murderous dictator. As I mentioned back in May, one protestor from “Voices in the Wilderness” wrote eloquently about his odyssey, and in March a former human shield related his own wake-up call, but there have be numerous others.

Now you can count members of Congress among those who’s eyes have been opened once they see the fruits of Hussein:

In a development that has received little public attention, about a third the US Congress has been to Iraq since May – and the trips are shifting the political dynamic on Capitol Hill about the war.

Unlike during Vietnam, when congressional visits often fueled lawmakers’ opposition to the war, these tours of Iraq are tending, if anything, to blunt antiwar sentiment. In many cases, they are solidifying support in Congress for the military effort.

It would be nice if folks wouldn’t need such a shot of reality for reason to triumph in their mind, especially Congressmen who vote on policies and funding, but hey, if it works I say send ’em all over there.

And note, of course the phrase, “In a development that has received little public attention…”. How would this come to the attention of the public? Who might be ignoring this story to instead portray Iraq as a quagmire? I hate to sound like a broken record (remember those things?) but the liberal media is indeed sounding like one themselves.

During my Christmas vacation, the terror alert level went from yellow to orange, prompting some folks to again complain that the system doesn’t really help us, especially if we’re just told to keep doing whatever we normally do anyway. My response would be; the terror alert system isn’t for us.

By “us” I mean your average Joe/Joesephine living their daily lives, whatever that may entail. Directly, our lives are affected minimally, if at all, when the terror alert level changes. Schools don’t change their schedules, we still go to work, malls are still open. They day-to-day events of life still go on.

Do you look with more suspicion at every person you pass on the street? Hopefully not. Do you cringe when you hear a plane fly overhead? Nah. So what’s the point, then? If our lives don’t directly change when the alert level does, why bother with it?

Because the terror alert system is for “them”, and “they” indirectly affect our lives. By “them” I mean police departments, airport screeners, and anyone involved in public safety in one way or another. When the terror alert level changes, their lives do directly change. New procedures kick in and they have to become more vigilant.

But those new procedures and vigilance affect “us” indirectly. Take airport security. When the terror alert goes to orange, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport starts implementing heightened security precautions. That does affect our lives to one degree or another. What it means is that you have to plan your flying schedule around what the security precautions are going to be on a given day. How do you find out what the situation is? Well, you could call the airport, or just turn on your TV and see what the alert level is. Orange? Then you have to arrive 90 minutes before the flight. Yellow? You have a little more leeway.

So no, the terror alert system might not affect you directly, but that doesn’t mean it’s not useful. You may not need to know its status hour-by-hour, but when you do need to know if terrorist threats are going to affect your day, you can find out.

The short answer, then, is that the terror alert system isn’t for “us”, but it will certainly affect “us”. And let’s thank God for “them”; the folks keeping us safe, and are directly affected.

14,965. That’s how many spam E-mails I received in 2003 on my work E-mail account. I’d collect them and delete them 1,000 at a time. Really a shame that such an advertising medium keeps going and going because just a few people actually respond to them. Just say “No” to spam. Even better, just completely ignore spam.

(This has been a public service announcement from “Considerettes”.)

Happy New Year! Well, perhaps not for those who enjoy using the (now officially oxymoronic) phrase “jobless recovery“, or for those, like Mr. Robert Kuttner who thought that this whole Bush economy was tanking, even for the states, which it apparently is not.

But for the rest of you, who aren’t fooled by dire predictions who’s basis is purely in a partisan foundation of sand, nor by catch phrases that have no basis in reality, have a very Happy New Year. (The rest of you, get over it. >grin<)

Well, the Christmas season is in full swing (in our home, that is, as opposed to department stores, where snowflake and reindeer decorations mean that Halloween is almost here). What with all the preparations and comings & goings, blogging will be extremely light in the coming days. Got to set those priorities, eh?

So have a Merry Christmas and a great New Year! And keep considering.