Bike Baby Bike!

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Thursday March 26, 2009 · 9:40 AM PDT

2009/03/26 · 09:40

One of the primary strategies of DC Republicans in their efforts to halt all efforts at finding a solution to the problems they caused is to find items in Obama's stimulus and budget bills to pick out, isolate , and demonize. Not-ready-for-prime-time Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal tried to do this with his famous (or infamous) swipe at volcano monitoring, for which he received quite deserved ridicule. Now it's Rep. Eric Cantor's turn. This is from an interview on The Takeway (h/t CarltonReid):

Rep. Eric Cantor: To give you an example, if you want to give the public sector money, to give you an example of the stimulus bill that recently passed through the Nancy Pelosi-controlled House and was signed into law by the president. The almost $800 billion bill. To give you just an example, $3 million went to the District of Columbia. You know what they did with that money? They’re going to go build bike paths, and they’re going to increase the number of bike racks in neighborhoods like Georgetown. I don’t think that that’s a stimulative move.

rebmoti

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Wednesday February 04, 2009 · 2:11 PM PST

2009/02/04 · 14:11

Since the Kansas legislature came into session, we've been waiting for the re-introduction of the Holcomb issue. As I wrote previously, the majority Republican legislators have to decide a) whether to bring up this issue again, b) how hard to pursue it, i.e., whether they will allow it to sidetrack all other legislative business as they did last year, and c) in exactly what manner to propose it.

Well, we all knew that the answer to a) was going to be yes. As for b), on the one hand they could just wait a couple of years and let Gov. Sam Brownback give them everything they want, but on the other hand it's likely that there will be some federal directives on the matter of coal power and climate change in the next little while - so boondoggle season might not last too much longer. That raises the urgency quite a bit.

As for c), we've now seen the first part of the plan:

rebmoti

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Sunday January 25, 2009 · 7:22 AM PST

2009/01/25 · 07:22

Well, it's been quite a week, hasn't it? Aside from all that hullaballoo out there in Washington, the Kansas State Legislature came into session this week. The tone was set by the preacher who used the opportunity to give an invocationon Thursday to decry our "culture of death." There's your hope and change, right there.

Gov. Sebelius put in a budget but with huge Republican majorities in both houses it was DOA. The state like all others is projecting a humongazoid deficit this year, and the Republicans are using the opportunity to slash state spending on nasty social ills like public education and infrastructure. Kathleen wanted some kind of targeted cuts, you see, while the Repubs got that look in your eye like Johnny Depp going over the side of the ship, only you know, they're a lot less good looking.

Another thing the Republicans want to talk a lot more about is Holcomb,

rebmoti

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Tuesday November 25, 2008 · 9:25 AM PST

2008/11/25 · 09:25

One can't help notice that "certain elements" in the political discourse are blaming the travails of the domestic auto industry on the fact that it is largely unionized. I consider this a political position rather than one that is justified by the facts.

Certainly there may be terms locked in from previous contract negotiations (when things were more rosy) that are no longer appropriate. Perhaps "job banking" - the practice of keeping laid off workers on salary until their jobs can be re-filled - doesn't work any longer. But the "shock, shock" that an auto worker can make $100,000 a year (working plenty of overtime) strikes me as rather hypocritical coming from people who don't blink an eye at the CEO making $14 million a year (14 million = 140 $100K line workers) or however many VPs or department heads making $250,000 per year and up. Can one look at the condition of the industry and truly claim that these management-types are twice or three times or 140 times more valuable that the worker on the line? And anyway, the unions in recent years have been quite ready to renogotiate, even give back, when they believe the overall health of the industry is at stake.

rebmoti

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Thursday November 20, 2008 · 12:19 PM PST

2008/11/20 · 12:19

I note this paragraph in GTPinNJ's posting this morning on Senate prospects in 2010:

Kansas – open seat (R) – likely Republican. This is the seat currently held by Sam Brownback, who has indicated that he will be retiring based on self-imposed term limits....Governor Kathleen Sebelius would be our best candidate to flip this seat, but if she doesn’t run, any other Democratic candidate would probably have only a slightly better chance of winning than I would have in getting a date with Jessica Alba.

It's my opinion, based on nothing but my own instincts, that Sebelius would rather be in charge of a multi-billion dollar cabinet department than be the Number 96 Senator. I haven't heard any leaks about her yet,

rebmoti

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Sunday November 09, 2008 · 6:58 PM PST

2008/11/09 · 18:58

It's hard not to have mixed feelings about what's happening to GM, which seems about to go out of business. OTOH, man, they knew for 30 years that this day was coming (we all did), and instead of preparing for the obvious future they chose to fatten up on fatter cars for 15 years. It's quite clear with all with an eye to see that their misfortunes are their own damn fault, and going out of business is only the consequences of the capitalist game, or at least so we have always been taught.

On the other hand, man, it's GM. Wasn't the comparison between GM and the Yankees meant to symbolize that it was the former that was the stronger company? There can be no greater symbol of the decline of America as an industrial, manufacturing power than the decimation of the domestic auto sector. That's the main basis of what's left of the industrial union movement, for one thing. Maybe that's part of the point. Think of the jobs! All I can say is, this green manufacturing thing better turn out to be pretty good.

And, my friends (as John McCain liked to say), do we not have here the necessary and expected outcome of the trend in American business during this last period that the most important statistics in any company's economy are the stock price and the next quarter's profits?

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Bike Baby Bike!

Holcomb rears its ugly head

The hayseeds are in bloom

Union bashing

2010: The View from Kansas

GM-ed up