Look, over there! The NYT editorial notes that while the nation is facing toward Wisconsin in the fight to preserve worker's rights, those busy little legislators in Arizona are still chomping away at the rights of immigrants.
Arizona made itself ground zero for a new nativism last year with a radical policing law .. Yet Arizona’s current legislative session is overstuffed with nativist bills, several of which passed through committee on Tuesday in an “omnibus” measure.
When it comes to making life miserable, the list of proposed legislation in AZ really is impressive.
Frank Rich explains why the GOP thinks it can get away with a government shutdown this time around, why they're wrong, and why this has nothing to do with reducing the deficit.
... this battle, ostensibly over the deficit, is so much larger than the sum of its line-item parts. The highest priority of America’s current political radicals is not to balance government budgets but to wage ideological warfare in Washington and state capitals alike. The relatively few dollars that would be saved by the proposed slashing of federal spending on Planned Parenthood and Head Start don’t dent the deficit; the cuts merely savage programs the right abhors. In Wisconsin, where state workers capitulated to Gov. Scott Walker’s demands for financial concessions, the radical Republicans’ only remaining task is to destroy labor’s right to collective bargaining.
Scott Walker doesn't appear to be getting any smarter, but is your governor learning? Four fomer governors report in on the lessons they picked up from their time in office. Former CO Gov. Bill Ritter learned that even in times of tight budgets, states need to develop programs and regulations to promote clean energy. I'd give that an 'A'. Bill Richardson's take away from his time at the statehouse is that giving incentives to the movie industry paid off for New Mexico. Which is a strange thing to focus on after eight years as governor, but then it is Oscar weekend. That's a C+, Bill. Phil Bredesen learned to fill his entire column with meaningless slogans and trite nautical metaphors. Frankly, Phil, it sounds like you slept through this class. D. And Mark Sanford starts off by saying that "chickens come home to roost" then concludes that the people of his state were angry about pensions. Really. Apparently Sanford did not learn that abandoning your job, disappearing from your state to carry on an international extramarital affair, and repeatedly lying to the people of your state is a bad thing. Take this F, Mark, and just be happy you can't get a Z. Thankfully, he doesn't get to repeat the class.
Dana Milbank points out a piece of Scott Walker's conversation with an ersatz-billionaire that hasn't gotten much play in the media, but goes a long way to explaining just who Scott Walker is.
In the recorded call, Walker praised a centrist state senator, Tim Cullen, as "about the only reasonable one" among the 14 Democratic legislators who fled the state to deny Walker the quorum he needs to destroy Wisconsin's public-sector unions. But when the fake Koch offered to call Cullen, Walker discouraged him:
"He's pretty reasonable, but he's not one of us. . . . He's not there for political reasons. He's just trying to get something done. . . . He's not a conservative. He's just a pragmatist."
"Just a pragmatist" - as if it were an epithet. "Just trying to get something done" - as if this were evidence of a character defect.
Charles Krauthammer rubs his hands and clucks in approval at the "magnificent turmoil" generated by Republicans "crossing the Rubicon" to attack unions (because Republicans never do that). Hey, Chuck, did anyone ride out to check the depth of that river?
My home town is #1, again. Sadly enough. Once again, FBI statistics put St. Louis as the most dangerous city in the nation. However, Washington Post guest-blogger Adam Arenson shows that the reasons for St. Louis unenviable ranking are more complex, and older, than you might think.
Finally and most significantly, the city embraced home rule in the 1870s, emancipating the city of St. Louis from its county but hemming itself in between the Mississippi River and Illinois on one side, and a new, independent St. Louis County on all other sides.
In the age of the automobile, and then the racially restrictive housing covenant, the county grew prosperous while the city withered, losing one hundred thousand residents each decade between World War II and the turn of the millennium. Once the fourth-largest city in the nation, St. Louis has slipped to 52nd.
Sherman, set the wayback machine for June 1, 2009. That's when David Brooks delivered his pronouncement of certain doom for "the Obama plan" at GM.
We’ve seen this before, albeit in different context: An overconfident government throws itself into a dysfunctional culture it doesn’t really understand. The result is quagmire. The costs escalate. There is no exit strategy.
Now we return to the present to face the
resulting disaster.
General Motors has reported net income of $4.7 billion, or $2.89 per share, for 2010, its first annual profit since 2004. ... GM executives see sales continuing to rise, especially in North America. With a good performance this year, the company could even reclaim the title of world's largest automaker from Toyota, and the U.S. government could recover more of the $49.5 billion it gave the company in 2009 to save it from collapse.
Oh, David Brooks, don't you get tired of always being so right?
And while we're packing away the wayback machine, it's now been 11 years since tax rates were reduced for the wealthiest Americans. I think I've been trickled on enough, thank you. So when do we see all those jobs they promised?