Blogs For Victory

The news story:

Still popular in Florida, former Gov. Jeb Bush said Wednesday that he’s interested in the seat Sen. Mel Martinez is giving up, and the field of possible candidates could quickly narrow to make way for the president’s younger brother.

Bush, 55, won praise from Democrats and Republicans alike for leading the state through eight hurricanes over a two-year period. He used standardized testing to overhaul the education system, was credited with making government more efficient and lowered taxes to make Florida more business-friendly.

While his older brother, soon-to-be former President George W. Bush is so unpopular and has been a liability to many Republicans candidates – and was one undoing for Martinez – Jeb Bush remains a popular figure here.

“I hope that Gov. Bush gets in the race. In my personal opinion, he understands public policy better than any other potential candidate looking at that race, by far,” said former state House Speaker Allan Bense, who was contemplating his own bid. Bense said he would not run if Bush entered. “It would clear the Republican field, I’m sure.”

Jeb is something special – I supported him in his unsuccessful 1994 bid for the governorship, and would have backed him in 1998 when he won had I not moved out of the State by that time. There isn’t much dispute that Jeb Bush was one of Florida’s most effective and successful governors, and the only reason he’ll never be President is because his older brother has already been.

But off to the Senate might be a good thing – good, that is, to get someone in there with strong conservative principles backed by the practical knowledge so often lacking in Senate proposals. A Senator Bush would not only know good ideas, but would know how they are likely to affect real world people in their day to day lives.

As a bonus, it would also usefully annoy liberals to have a Bush remaining in the seat of power in DC.

There really isn’t:

Reasonable people can — and do — disagree about how Vallejo found itself in bankruptcy. There’s no doubt, however, that many of the city’s problems stem from its inability to recover from the 1996 closure of the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, once the city’s largest employer. The city also lost hundreds of thousands dollars per year in sales tax revenue after the closure of a Wal-Mart.

But the largest share of the blame in Vallejo has centered on public-safety salaries and benefits, which make up about 75 percent of the city’s general fund budget. Base pay for firefighters is more than $80,000 per year and employees can retire at age 50 with a pension equal to 90 percent of their salary, the result of a retroactive pension increase several years ago.

With the downturn in the housing market hammering revenues, Vallejo is asking the bankruptcy judge to void the collective-bargaining agreements that led to those salary and benefit arrangements. And the possibility of hard-fought union contracts going up in smoke has struck fear in the heart of labor groups.

The California Professional Firefighters union proclaims, “If allowed to stand, Vallejo’s attack on its own employees would send shock waves throughout the labor movement.” Gloster, the attorney representing Vallejo’s firefighters and police officers, says, “It’s very difficult to see how their politicians should actually do the hard work to balance their budgets if they can get a do-over with a simple bankruptcy filing.” Vallejo’s unions are contending in court that the city is not truly insolvent. The city rejected an offer from the unions for about $10 million in concessions.

Here in Nevada we are also in the midst of a financial crisis – a crisis created entirely by the fact that the government figured that not only is there an endless supply of money, but an endlessly increasing supply of money. We budget on a biennial schedule here and our crackerjack legislators and governor assumed that revenues would increase year after year after year…trouble is, revenues are nosediving in 2008 and aren’t looking any better for 2009.

This is the way government should budget:

Whatever the actual revenues were for the fiscal year two years previous to the upcoming fiscal year, assume that incoming revenues will be 10% less than that. Work your budget around those numbers. If, at the end of the fiscal year, you find you have bags of money left over because you lived within your means, then have at it – do whatever you want with that money. If you end up short, then you’ll have to do some trimming, but it is unlikely that you’ll have to do anything drastic. Simple and effective and it doesn’t preclude any particular spending, but it does ensure that you’re always assuming the worst and hoping for the best – which is the wise way to budget.

Will any government ever do this? Only if we insist. Will we do that? Not until we conservatives educate the populace on the connection between personal freedom and prosperity and limited government spending.

This may take a while, but its worth doing.

We’ll see where this leads:

Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) moves since the November elections have shaken up some of her colleagues, with some looking over their shoulders and others worried about how the Speaker will lead her expanded majority in 2009.

Next year is regarded as the biggest legislative opportunity for Democrats since 1993, the last time they controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress.

But not all Democrats are celebrating. Liberals are worried about Pelosi’s vow to govern “from the middle” and centrists are concerned that the make-up of the House leadership team has shifted noticeably to the left.

Contrary to the jubilation of House Democrats after they regained control of the lower chamber after the 2006 elections, there is some unease among members heading into the 111th Congress.

“Everybody I talk to, everybody’s worried about something,” said a Democratic staffer.

Pelosi’s effort to make some Democrats anxious could be a calculated maneuver as she seeks to maximize the effectiveness of her caucus heading into 2009. Pelosi’s hard-charging tone and decisions over the past month have sent a message to her colleagues: Don’t get too comfortable.

Indeed, don’t get comfortable. While Pelosi is without a doubt the worst Speaker of the past 50 years (and perhaps much longer), she is adept at the primary liberal game – gaining and retaining power. Pelosi, it should be remembered, essentially obtained her current position via illegal campaign contributions to Democratic House candidates who then owed her big time once the Democrats gained the majority…and who are now being primed to take over key House positions by Pelosi in a gambit to make the House a mere rubber stamp of the Speaker’s. Which is a doubly bad prospect given the fact that Pelosi is a cipher – a mere regurgitator of liberal/left platitudes who wouldn’t know an actual idea if it fell on her. Better for the country if she were a leftwing ideologue determined to push through a clear agenda – at least everyone would know what we’re up against and be able to work with that reality…now we don’t know when she’ll jump ship on a program or what scatterbrained ideas might pass in review on the whim of an ill-informed Speaker.

One of the brightest prospects for the GOP is our chances in the House – and even if we don’t end up scoring a majority in 2010, we can still do a great service to our nation by picking up 25 or 30 seats: that kind of loss might convince the Democrats to unseat Pelosi for the 2011 House session.

It has been noted that the MSM was loath to describe the Mumbai terrorists for what they were – radical Islamists bent on murdering Jews for being Jews, Americans for being American and Brits for being British. This is because the MSMers are largely cowards – offend an Islamist and you might wind up on a videotaped beheading as the guest of honor, offend a Jew and you might be called anti-Semitic in obscure publications. The other reason is that the MSM is deathly afraid of being called to account for their nauseating role in essentially serving as a propaganda distributor for anti-American/anti-western propaganda since 9/11. The latter reason will fade as Obama comes to be more in charge and thus the MSM will feel the need to help him have enemies to battle against, naturally being granted all the patience and reticence the MSM should display towards leaders dealing with complex issues without easy solution…such help, of course, never given to President Bush because, well, Bush is a Republican and that’s all anyone needs to know.

And yet the stark reality remains – Mumbai was attacked for what it is, rather than anything Indians do. It is a highly westernized city, a highly market-orientated city, a city where westerners gather in large numbers to deal with Indians engaging in the global marketplace of goods and ideas. It was, in short, precisely what the Islamists hate – what we are, and they want to punish us for daring to be other than what they are. The MSM is being criminally negligent in not reporting the truth about the situation – and people have died, are dying and will die simply because the MSM – in service to various liberal/left ideologies – simply refuses to tell the truth.

Despite an enormous amount of help from Comrade Obama, Georgia Democrat Jim Martin was handily defeated by Senator Saxby Chambliss.

And despite attempts by Al Franken to steal his election, it looks like Norm Coleman will be returning to the Senate as well.

Tonight, Saul Anuzis, Michigan’s State GOP Chair and candidate for the RNC Chairman will join Ali, Pat, and I on The American Resolve. Tune in at 6 PM EST for the live interview.

For possibly giving them a Republican governor:

Should Janet Napolitano, Barack Obama’s pick for homeland security chief, be confirmed as expected by the Senate, Napolitano will need to step down from her current position as governor of Arizona.

The state has no lieutenant governor, and its laws dictate that the governor, who is a Democrat, be replaced by Secretary of State Jan Brewer – a Republican.

The Associated Press reports that Brewer, who would be governor through 2010, “had a reputation as a fiscal hard-liner and conservative on social issues while a legislator in the 1980s and 1990s, so her taking over the governorship would mean a new approach from Napolitano’s direction.”

There are plenty of good things about the Obama Administration – Obama, Biden and Hillary are out of the Senate; Napolitano is out of Arizona; Emanuel is out of the House…the benefits just keep rolling in. With a little luck, Obama will appoint so many senior Democrats than when his liberal Administration crashes and burns, it will gut the Democrats for a generation.

But I’m not too hopeful that actual justice will be done:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a statement late Wednesday, on Thanksgiving eve, that she expects a House Ethics committee report on the questioned dealings of Ways and Means Committee chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) to be completed by Jan. 3.

Pelosi’s statement followed two days of renewed questions regarding Rangel, after a New York Times article reported he “was instrumental in preserving a lucrative tax loophole that benefited an oil-drilling company last year, while at the same time its chief executive was pledging $1 million” to help fund a new City College of New York school of public service that will be named in Rangel’s honor.

This latest New York Times story was followed the next day by an editorial in the same paper, which called on Pelosi to ensure the ethics investigation was moving forward. “We hope that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is shocked into action. She should insist that the ethics investigation move forward — and that Mr. Rangel relinquish his chairmanship during the inquiry. If Mr. Rangel continues to resist, the speaker should permanently reassign the gavel. In a deep economic crisis, the committee, and the country, cannot afford the distraction,” the Times editorialized.

The Washington Post jumped into the fray as well, writing Saturday that Rangel “should step aside as chairman while the ethics committee expands its inquiry.”

Given what happened to DeLay, Rangel should be forced to resign – but, be that as it may, this is the central test as to whether or not Pelosi’s Congress will really be something new, or just more of the same. To a lesser degree, it is also a challenge to Obama – if there is a whitewash or some sort of special treatment given to Rangel, then it will be up to Obama to make clear that he is displeased with such an outcome – if he doesn’t, then that will be yet another indicator that “pay for play” is still the name of the Democrat’s game.

If by “change” you mean “keep things almost exactly as they are now“:

After eight years as senator from New York, Hillary Clinton is trading places, moving from Congress to the incoming administration.

On Monday, President-elect Barack Obama announced that he asked his former rival to be his secretary of state.

That means the scramble begins to replace Clinton on Capitol Hill. Among those mentioned to take her seat as New York’s junior senator is her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

This appointment is only for two years – then a special election in 2010 to fill the remainder of Hillary’s term through 2012. The real worry: Chelsea Clinton will turn 30 on February 27, 2010…and then be old enough to be a Senator. We could have endless Clintons here…the long, national nightmare might never end!

The runoff between Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss and Democrat Jim Martin – Real Clear Politics aggregate of recent polls has Chambliss up by 4.7 points. All in all, it looks like the GOP will pull out a win here, though we must work hard – this could end up being the 41st GOP Senator.

As a side note, after our crushing defeat in 1992, it was Georgia’s Senate race which signaled the turn of the tide – coming hard on our defeat, it ushered in a period of victory which culminated in the 1994 mid-terms. History doesn’t actually repeat itself, but lets get a victory in Georgia and hope its an omen of our resurgence.