Change we can believe in:

President Obama has abolished the position in his White House dedicated to transparency and shunted those duties into the portfolio of a partisan ex-lobbyist who is openly antagonistic to the notion of disclosure by government and politicians…

The whole “transparency” thing was never more than a dodge, anyway – but it is still very revealing that Obama is not even pretending anymore. The arrogance of power seems to have completely over taken him. It might be that he really doesn’t understand just how unpopular he has become – convinced of his own righteousness, he’s just going to blunder ahead to complete destruction.

Over the past few days I did a bit of driving around. The Mrs wanted to pick up some things at some pretty widely separated locations – so, off on the road we went. First down to Los Angeles, then turning around and up to St George, Utah. It was an instructive trip on the state of our nation.

Los Angeles was dirtier than I remember. I hadn’t been there in a couple years. The roads – including Interstate 10 – were in bad shape. The streets of the city were filthy. Graffiti, which has always been bad in Los Angeles, is much worse and has spread to outlying areas. It appears that no one is even making an attempt at cleaning it up. Lots of empty store fronts. Our particular destination in Los Angeles was the shopping district known as Santee Alley.

Santee Alley, for those who have never been, has always been a rather flea market sort of place – just about everything for sale at rock bottom prices. It, at least, seems to have been recently refurbished – but also just as swiftly allowed to become quite dirty. There were far fewer vendors than a I recall – and whereas you once could barely move in the alley, it was at best only about half filled with shoppers.

It is almost entirely immigrants who make up the store owners – and I only qualify that on the theory there may be a native-born American running a store there, but I’ve never seen one. Hard working and trying to get ahead, these are the good people we want in our nation. In spite of all the hoopla about Arizona’s immigration law, I only saw one sign advocating a boycott of Arizona – and it wasn’t in the Alley, proper, but in one of the higher-end stores on the main street…I suspect that in there I might find an American-born proprietor.

But one could not help but notice the lack of spirit – the fact that things are far from well. As I said, the place was quite dirty – and not just the sort of dirt one is used to in a large city, but the sort of dirt which accumulates when the people running the place simply don’t care that some of their citizens are wallowing in squalor. The place was also quite worn down – outside of the recently refurbished Alley, the streets and sidewalks are crumbling.

I was witnessing the death of a city – and the death of a State. An American city is becoming a Third World backwater. A place where the poor attempt to scratch out an ever more difficult living, while everyone who can leave has already left. California is bankrupt – and the little people are being left behind in a crumbling, filthy sewer…of course, the governing class is still taking care of itself, as we can see in the intense fights the public sector unions are putting up against any attempt to bring economic sense to government.

Ah, but isn’t this all just the economy? You know – things are bad all around and so its bound to get a bit worn down. It isn’t indifference – its just the hard reality. But then I drove to St George, Utah.

The first thing you notice when you get to St George is that its all very clean. Even the construction sites are tidy. Vacant lots are not left to become overgrown, but are carefully cleared and kept in order. No graffiti. The streets and sidewalks are in good repair – and the whole place exudes the sense that those who live there have secured for themselves a government which figures its job is to make life as good as possible for the people.

Over in Los Angeles, you’ve got departments for Aging, Housing, Cultural Affairs, El Pueblo (whatever that is, exactly), Disability, Environmental Affairs, Information Technology, Neighborhood Empowerment, Community Development, Community Re-Development (in case Development doesn’t work out, I guess), Cultural Affairs…none of which, I guess, can be spared to provide some money to clean up graffiti and repair the side walks. Meanwhile, St George seems to get by with far fewer departments – but the sidewalks are in good shape, and the city is tidy as a parade ground.

Of course, Los Angeles is a lot bigger than St George – but it also, then, has vastly more people to do actual work, as well as far more funds for getting the work done. Running a city – or, indeed, any government – isn’t rocket science. All it takes is a reasonable degree of public involvement and this creates the sort of political class who will sit down and decide that its time to get those sidewalks fixed…in Los Angeles, you have public apathy leading to an entrenched class of political looters who see no upside in actually taking care of the city.

To fix what is wrong with America will take direct action on the part of the American people to clear out the current Ruling Class. The people who have run Los Angeles, California and, to a large extent, America in to the ground must be replaced by the sort of people who have kept St George in good shape even in a down economy. Our first step in this task comes in November – but it is only a first step. From top to bottom, government must be overturned – the corrupt Ruling Class must give way to new men and women who will do the right thing, and they must in their turn be watched by an aroused people, who will not let things slip again.

I was depressed by what I saw in Los Angeles (as I have been by what I’ve seen increasingly in Las Vegas which mirrors Los Angeles’ destruction), but encouraged by what I saw in St George. We can fix this – we can restore our nation. All we have to do is make the effort.

If you’re going to be a fanatic, I guess you might as well go all the way:

…He doesn’t even want his ruling — which ignores Supreme Court precedent and imposes gay marriage against the expressed wishes of the electorate — appealed to the Ninth Circuit. Walker feels that only the state politicians who were against Proposition 8 have standing to appeal, while the over 7 million California voters who supported Proposition 8 shouldn’t be able to even present their position to a higher court. It’s outrageous. The people are supposed to be sovereign, not the politicians. This stay order will be appealed to the Ninth Circuit and if necessary to Justice Anthony Kennedy, and I think it is a tactical mistake on Judge Walker’s part to display his injudicious zeal — once again — before Kennedy’s eyes.

It seems that Walker prefers to be the hero of the gay rights movement to being a judge – it is the only way to read this: he wants gay marriage and is determined to impose it on his own hook. He doesn’t care about the risk of over-turn on appeal – he’s got his fame among his ideological friends, and that is what he values more than anything else.

While the 9th circuit will probably flub its task – staying Walker’s ruling is the only rational course of action – it does seem that the Supreme Court, even if it wants to impose gay marriage, will not be pleased at the way Walker is going about his business.

UPDATE: How Glenn Beck gets it wrong on gay marriage.

UPDATE II: From Time, of all places – Walker might have sabotaged his own agenda:

And to add another twist, at least one constitutional-law scholar in California is suggesting that by trumpeting the issue of standing, Walker has opened a hornet’s nest he may have been better off leaving undisturbed. “If the proponents don’t have standing to appeal, then it’s entirely plausible that the courts will rule that they did not properly have standing to go to trial,” Vikram Amar, a law professor at the University of California at Davis, told TIME Thursday evening. “This is an issue he glossed over when he allowed them to intervene in the trial.”

Amar says that if the Ninth Circuit agrees with Walker that the proponents don’t have standing to appeal, the judges may well decide they shouldn’t have been allowed to intervene in the case at all. If they do, he says, they could decide to vacate the trial entirely, sending it back to Walker to start over. The governor and attorney general would be unlikely to intervene — but on the other hand, come November, voters will choose new candidates for both of those offices…

It was flat out wrong for CA AG Brown to not go in to the case – for that, alone, he should have been removed from office in California (if you’re AG, you defend the laws – even if you don’t like them. Period.). Walker wanted a “legal” ruling so he allowed standing to a group of people, and then said they didn’t have standing because he knows darned well his ruling will be over turned on appeal…but if they don’t have standing now, then they didn’t have standing then. Can’t have it both ways, “judge”.

This just points out even more strongly the nature of this trial and ruling – what was wanted was a certain ruling, and Walker was determined to get it. Impeachment is a necessity – simply to defend the judicial system of the United States.

From the AP:

The $700 billion U.S. bailout program launched in response to the global economic meltdown had a far greater impact overseas than other countries’ financial rescue plans did on the U.S., according to a new report from a congressional watchdog.

Billions of dollars in U.S. rescue funds wound up in big banks in France, Germany and other nations. That was probably inevitable because of the structure of the Treasury Department’s program, the Congressional Oversight Panel says in a new report issued Thursday…

Bail outs are never a good idea – and this is just a strong bit of proof of that. They never work as intended and will always benefit groups and institutions no one in their right mind would intend to benefit.

It was bad enough that we even did the bail outs, but if we had a government run by people with any sense at all – even if not enough sense to understand that bail outs are stupid – then we would have at least ensured that every penny went to Americans, alone. But that wasn’t the point – what was intended was a vast sum of money to be expended by Democrats to secure power and wealth for themselves – and that is precisely what we got – all that we got, and all we ever would get, while they are in charge.

November is coming!

You’ll be hooked from the first sentence. Give this guy your support.

With Obama’s support pretty much left to the Democratic base, how much longer will they be able to ignore how his policies are making things worse before he loses them too? And things look worse than we thought.

June’s trade deficit swelled 18.8% to $49.9 billion, the highest since October 2008. That was much worse than Wall Street predicted — or what the Commerce Department estimated in the recent Q2 GDP report. The new report, along with recent inventory data, suggest Commerce will revise down Q2 economic growth from the already-sluggish 2.4% annual rate to about 1%, according to Action Economics. Action Economics is looking for stronger retail inventory figures later this week that would imply a 1.4% GDP pace.

More Americans are already blaming Obama for the economy, so things really don’t look good for Obama this November, or for 2012.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: And growth forecasts have been cut as economists finally start admitting reality.

President Bush has been busy lately. He just got back from a visit to Haiti… you should check out his Facebook page for details on that trip. But what he did yesterday morning is what I really want to talk about.  Yesterday, Bush was at at DFW Airport to surprise 145 troops who just returned from Iraq and Afghanistan.

As 145 soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan walked through the double doors in Terminal D at DFW Airport on Wednesday for two weeks of R&R, they were greeted not only by their families, but by some special guests.

Former President George W. Bush and Laura Bush joined 33 kids participating in the North Texas Super Bowl Host Committee’s SLANT 45 project to give service members perhaps the most memorable moment since the Welcome Home Heroes initiative started in November 2004.

“Today was one of the best, if not the best day we ever had,” said Lt. Col. Patrick McAfee, who has overseen the program for the last three years. “It was phenomenal and the bottom line is that these service members had the shock of their lives. Kids being there gives special meaning to us soldiers, and the president and first lady were there just like regular people.”

I miss ya, Dubya!

Rep. Paul Ryan, on the scene of the melt down, reports:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, tells National Review Online that Democrats are entering a “panic mode” as November approaches. “They are beginning to get a little unhinged,” Ryan says.

“The Left sees their agenda being rebuked by the voters this fall,” Ryan tells us. As their electoral worries mount, he says, Democrats are scurrying to “nullify any notion that there is an alternative path for America. They want to delegitimize an alternative plan and win the argument by default, making the case that there is no other path for America than what progressives have mapped out for the country, and that any other talk, of any other idea, is just fanciful.”

“That’s what’s troubling,” Ryan says. “They are trying to deny the debate that must happen if we are going to get out of the mess that we’re in.”…

The dream of decades is dying – they thought that McGovern would do it; but he lost. They thought that Carter might pull it off; but he was defeated for re-election. They thought that Clinton would ram it on through; but he betrayed them and tacked to the center to ensure his own political survival. Now comes Obama – and the left was sure they had it in the bag.

And to a certain extent, they did – a hard left ideologue was elected along with a Congress led by the furthest left part of the Democrat party. And President and Congress did start to work – but then something happened the left never expected: the people immediately reacted against it. And then it just got worse and worse – the people started to spontaneously organize and began to exert populist pressure on the GOP to shift towards the people. Capping it all off, the liberal prescription for the economy – which all liberals were convinced would work – crashed and burned.

Now they are facing a complete rejection – not just the normal mid-term losses, but the risk of the sort of losses you spend 20 years recovering from. 20 years in which, of course, the other side can repeal and replace everything you’ve done. Faced with this stark fact, they are getting in a panic – not knowing what to do, they are running around trying one expedient after another to survive.

It won’t work – its too late in the game…

Matching his worst poll result to date:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 24% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-six percent (46%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -22…

And an overall total of 56% disapprove of the President’s job performance – small wonder Obama is going to be scarce on the campaign trail this fall.

Not what anyone wants to hear, but it is the case:

Pimco, the world’s biggest bond fund manager, has warned the US faces a prolonged period of stagnant growth and a real risk of outright deflation, similar to what Japan experienced in 1990s.

head-in-hands

Echoing a warning by M&G’s bond team on Monday, Pimco portfolio manager Scott Mather says if a Japan-like deflationary scenario becomes the baseline for the US, it would have “profound implications for asset prices”…

Yeah, no kidding. Others – such as Mish – have been warning about this for some time. I believe we are in a deflationary spiral – and debt is the ultimate culprit as it prevents us from building wealth.

All the government spending done over the past two years – here and around the world – was intended to spark inflation (which, by the way, is the financial system and government picking your pocket, but that’s an issue for another day) and thus get the easy money, get-richer-quick (for some) economy rolling again. It didn’t work – and as noted in the article, Japan has already tried this for 20 years and it never worked – in fact, the effort exacerbates the problem because when government “stimulates”, it builds more debt.

To get out of this there are a whole list of things which must be done – but first and foremost is balancing the budget. Until government stops spending more than it takes in, there sinews of economic growth simply won’t exist in sufficient force. We also need a host of regulatory and tax changes – but even cutting taxes won’t be sufficient if government spending is not balanced.

The debt is the problem, my friends – until we fix that, we fix nothing.