Stunned.  NOT!

From HotAir.com:

[T]he economists at e21 take a long look at a new study by Daniel Wilson at the San Francisco Fed on the effect on employment from the Obama administration’s stimulus plan, which indicates that the impact was a lot less than advertised.  Instead of adding two million jobs to the economy, the Fed finds that any new jobs added had disappeared by August of this year.

And from the e21 website….

Wilson’s study makes an important contribution to this debate by focusing on state-by-state comparisons. A large portion of stimulus funding at the state level was based on criteria that were entirely independent of the economic situation that states faced. For example, the number of existing highway miles was used to calculate additional transportation spending.

The study uses this resulting variation in state-level stimulus funding to determine what impact ARRA funding had on employment — including both the direct impact of workers hired to complete planned projects, as well as any broader spillover effects resulting from greater government spending. Administration economists have repeatedly emphasized the importance of this indirect employment growth in driving economic recovery.

The results suggest that though the program did result in 2 million jobs “created or saved” by March 2010, net job creation was statistically indistinguishable from zero by August of this year. Taken at face value, this would suggest that the stimulus program (with an overall cost of $814 billion) worked only to generate temporary jobs at a cost of over $400,000 per worker. Even if the stimulus had in fact generated this level of employment as a durable outcome, it would still have been an extremely expensive way to generate employment.

But we all knew this already didn’t we?  Read the whole thing!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I have several ideas for posts, some related to the Prop 8 hearing, others related the animosity of certain segments of the left (in stark contrast to the broad-mindedness* in other progressive precincts).  But, alas, the last-minute revisions of my dissertation have both deprived me of time to blog and of the energy to craft original content.

So, I’ll just leave you with Charles Krauthammer’s commentary on the president’s statement on the deal extending the Bush tax cuts:

Well, I was struck by the tone and by the audience. This is ostensibly a speech to the American people. It was actually a speech addressed at Daily Kos, the New York Times, and MoveOn. This was a speech that was rather partisan. Interestingly, it’s about the first agreement and supposedly the first step in a new era of comity in Washington, but it was quite partisan. He attacked the Republican ideas. He said he disagrees with them strongly, but he had to compromise. This was a speech aimed at appeasing the Left which is extremely angry over this, and it laid out the details of the agreement. We came in a few seconds left, a few seconds after it started, but generally when you get a deal like this, he mentions the opposition and the leaders and he thanks them, and he says how wonderful it was entering in these negotiations and reaching the agreement. I didn’t hear any of that, which is odd for the first step on a new, a new kind of a tone in Washington.

Jennifer Rubin reports that after leaving the White House, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid “looked like someone shot his dog.” He may have won a fifth term in the Senate and held onto his job as majority leader, but it seems his Republican colleagues may yield more power than he.   (more…)

If my experience is a guide, then conservatives and other Californians skeptical and/or incredulous about Jerry Brown’s re-election last month are engaging in some pretty fascinating conversations about the once and future governor.  And while some believe his election does no bode well for the state, not all of us are certain his third term will be a disaster.

I’ve even wondered if his eccentricity could serve us well.  He may well be beholden to no interest, least of all the all-powerful public employee unions.

But, our expectations run the gamut from one woman suggesting that he’s going to be a very good governor because he wants to erase the stain of his past tenure while yet another believes that he’ll hold the line on spending and stand up to interest groups because he knows this one’s for the history books and given his age (he’s 72), he has no intention to run for reelection in 2014.  He won’t thus be concerned about burning bridges to the groups who helped him win this time around and whose support would be essential to securing the Democratic nomination and another term.  His concern is not the minutiae of electoral policies, but leaving the stand on sound fiscal footing to secure his legacy.

What is striking is that while many conservatives, including yours truly, are skeptical that he will serve the state well, some, also including yours truly, wonder if maybe he’ll surprise us all.  But, incredulous we may be that our fellow Californians elected him (despite his record), when we talk about the incoming Brown Administration, we’re not all forecasting doom.  And we’re having some pretty fascinating conversations, speculating about how he’ll govern.

But, once he takes office, our conversations about his Administration may be less stimulating (as they must needs become less speculative) as we will find out which scenario plays out.

*NB:  Title tweaked after initial publication.

Apologies for the slow blogging, but have been quite busy editing the final draft of my dissertation.  Via Hotair, caught something revealing would-be Democratic Senate Leader Charles Schumer said:

Schumer, who handily won re-election this year, acknowledged the anger vented by tea partyers and others during the election but insisted that didn’t extend to upper-income tax cuts.

Voters “did say ‘repeal health care,’ they did say ‘reduce the size of government.’ But not a single one of them from the tea party or anywhere said ‘give tax breaks to the wealthiest,’” Schumer said in a rare moment of candor.

This led Allahpundit to quip:

So the midterms were a referendum on repealing ObamaCare, by the Democrats’ own admission? There’s your tax-cut compromise, then: Republicans will agree to let the cuts lapse for households earning over a quarter mil in return for the left agreeing to torpedo our new health-care boondoggle, per the voters’ wishes according to none other than Charles Schumer himself.

There you have it fellas (& gals), Charles Schumer believes voters want to reduce the size of government and repeal Obamacare.  I trust this Democrat to get the ball rolling on helping them achieve these goals.

(h/t – Instapundit)

Just realize how much of the movement to wealth & health of the world from 1948 to 2009 is in large measure thanks to the influence of the United States of America.

Coincidence?  Hardly.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Over at Politico, Josh Gerstein reports:

Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) has announced his support for legislation that would permit the repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy banning openly gay service members, making him the second Republican to go on record in favor of conditional repeal language attached to a pending defense budget bill.

“I have been in the military for 31 years and counting, and have served as a subordinate and as an officer. … When a soldier answers the call to serve and risks life or limb, it has never mattered to me whether they are gay or straight. My only concern has been whether their service and sacrifice is with pride and honor,” Brown said after two days of Senate Armed Services Committee hearings on “don’t ask” and a Defense Department study of how repeal could be implemented.

Looks like Senate Majority Leader now has the votes to overcome a filibuster on DADT repeal.  Now, he just needs to stop his foot-dragging on tax cuts so he can move forward on repeal.  Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said “she would vote with Democrats to end the military’s ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, “, but not “until a debate over tax cuts has been resolved“:

“Once the tax issue is resolved, I have made it clear that if the Majority Leader brings the Defense Authorization bill to the floor with sufficient time allowed for debate and amendments, I would vote to proceed to the bill,” she said in a statement.

Harry, the ball’s in your court.

I put together this information back in July of this year:

November 2008 (President George W. Bush)
Total Unemployed: 10.3 MILLION
Unemployment Rate: 6.7%

Obama Inaugurated – Jan 20, 2009
Total Unemployed: 11.1 MILLION

$787 Billion “Stimulus Package” – Passed Feb 2009
Total Unemployed: 12.5 MILLION

JULY 1, 2009
Total Unemployed: 14.5 MILLION
Unemployment Rate: 9.4%

November 2009 – “I will not rest until all Americans who want work can find work,” President Obama
Total Unemployed: 15.4 MILLION

January, 2010
Total Unemployed: 14.8 MILLION
Unemployment Rate:  9.7%

Healthcare Reform Signed Into Law – March 2010
Unemployment Rate:  9.7%
Total Unemployed: 15 MILLION

JULY 1, 2010
Total Unemployed: 14.6 MILLION
Unemployment Rate:  9.5%

Let’s add today’s update, shall we….

DECEMBER 3, 2010 – 22 MONTHS SINCE OBAMA BECAME PRESIDENT
Total Unemployed: 15.1 MILLION
Unemployment Rate:  9.8%

This is your country on Obamanomics.  Any questions?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Just received the news in an e-mail form the organization:  ”Equality California Executive Director Geoff Kors today announced that he will step down from his position on March 31, 2011, at the conclusion of his ninth year with the organization.”

This is good news indeed.  Kors has been a relentless partisan while helming the advocacy organization, turning it into little more than a gay and lesbian auxiliary of the California Democratic Party.  That said, given that the (once-)Golden State has effectively become a one-party state, his partisanship did serve a purpose.

While Kors has done a good job of building coalitions among the left-leaning interest groups who hold sway in Sacramento and in lobbying legislators on the left, he did a terrible job helping the opposition to Prop. 8.  Should federal courts uphold that provision, those seeking to overturn it at the polls will need develop a different strategy for repeal than Kors et al implemented in opposition.  With Kors departing, that becomes increasingly likely.  His leadership team was reluctant to work with gay Republicans and consider their ideas.  Even in the wake of the proposition’s passage, gay Republicans (as this blog has reported) were excluded from the various post-mortems, many of which EqCA spearheaded.

Let us hope Kors’ successor does a better job of reaching out to Republicans and showing respect for the diversity of views among gay and lesbian residents of this wonderful, but economically challenged, state.  That way, we stand a better change of repealing Prop 8.

Joe Solmonese, your move.

Over at Powerline, Paul Mirengoff offers nuanced take on the Pentagon report on DADT and offers this nugget which gets at the nub of the issue:

If repeal can be accomplished at no appreciable cost to the military’s ability to fight, then DADT should be repealed instantly. Otherwise it should not be repealed.

And that’s really what it’s all about.  Read the whole thing.

(Please note, I am writing this as I prepare for bed Thursday evening, with a brain fried from a day spent doing last-minute edits of my dissertation.  I expect to offer some commentary on his post in the morning, as I believe, he addresses the important objections to DADT repeal — and in a civil manner.  Those who favor repeal should address his concerns in a similar manner.)

FRIDAY MORNING UPDATE:  I had hoped to offer commentary on Paul’s post this morning, but a number of things came up, mostly related to my dissertation, but also thought it important to post on the Kors’ resignation.

The gist of my reply would be that the current legislation puts the ball in the military’s court, so once it passes, the brass can address the concerns raised by the study, perhaps putting forward a tiered approach to repeal, starting e.g., with translators and implementing repeal on a unit by unit basis, addressing the concerns with each unit.   Again, I’m not a military guy, so don’t know exactly how to do this, so, let’s have more knowledgeable guys implement the particularities of repeal.

Just over two years ago, when the mortgage meltdown helped send the economy south, Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media told us the deregulatory policies of the Bush Administration were to blame. Only problem was that W, good man that he was (and remains), wasn’t a deregulator.

He called himself a compassionate conservative and in his eyes, followers of that ideology embraced a more activist federal government.  He didn’t see government as the problem.  He didn’t seek to deregulate the private sector. 

Indeed, whenever I ask our readers to identify specific deregulatory policies of the Bush Administration (that led to the meltdown), we get no references to Bush-era policies, but instead references to Clinton-era policies.  And as I noted in the post linked above, even “Obama-supporting columnist Sebastian Mallaby wrote, during [the 2008] campaign, that the “claim that the financial crisis reflects Bush-McCain deregulation is not only nonsense. It is the sort of nonsense that could matter.“  Deregulation didn’t cause the meltdown.

Now via Glenn Reynolds comes a report that indicates that instead of deregulating the economy, George W. Bush re-regulated it:

Citing Government Accountability Office figures, Heritage said “federal agencies promulgated 43 rules during the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, that impose significant burdens on the private sector. The total costs for these rules were estimated by the regulators themselves at some $28 billion, the highest level since at least 1981, the earliest date for which figures are available.”

And contrary to the conventional wisdom, Obama’s red tape explosion was preceded by a Bush administration regulatory carpet-bombing of the private sector that increased the cost of doing business by at least $70 billion.

Read the whole thing.

First, kudos to Illinois legislators for passing a law recognizing same-sex civil unions.  This is the way states should go about recognizing gay relationships, through the legislature, not the courts.

But, the bill’s chief sponsor in the state House, state Rep. Greg Harris was wrong to include different-sex couples in this new law’s protections.  Such couples already have an option for recognition of their unions:  marriage.

Still, while an imperfect bill, it is a step in the right direction.

From her new berth at the Washington Post, the Hebrew Athena alerts us to a striking new poll:

In November, 36.0% of American Adults identified themselves as Republicans; 34.7% considered themselves Democrats, and 29.3% were not affiliated with either major party. That’s the largest number of Republicans since February 2005 and the first time ever that Rasmussen Reports polling has found more people identifying as Republicans than Democrats.

Interesting trend.  Let’s see if it holds up once Republicans take over in the House.  If they hold true to the Reagan/Tea Party principles of more personal and economic freedom and a less intrusive governments, methinks the trend will hold.

California is not the only state facing fiscal catastrophe.  Other states are teetering on the edge as well.  Michael Barone looks a the states in “such bad fiscal shape” and find they are in “the parts of America where the public employee unions have been calling the shots, insisting on expanded payrolls, ever higher pay, hugely generous fringe benefits and utterly unsustainable pension promises.”  Given the might of these unions, Democratic politicians (and some Republicans as well) have feared taking them on, lest they lose their support when election time comes ’round.

If Congress would enact a law allowing states to declare bankruptcy as University of Pennsylvania law professor David Skeel, a graduate of the nation’s most collegial top law school, suggests in an article in the Weekly Standard, Barone believes that would give state governments a bargaining chip in negotiations with the now seemingly omnipotent unions:

The threat of bankruptcy would put a powerful weapon in the hands of governors and legislatures: They can tell their unions that they have to accept cuts now or face a much more dire fate in bankruptcy court.

It’s not clear that governors like California’s Jerry Brown, who first authorized public employee unions in the 1970s, or Illinois’ Pat Quinn, will be eager to use such a threat against unions, which have been the Democratic Party’s longtime allies and financiers.

And the answer to that question, whether Democratic governors of states in fiscal crisis, will determine whether or note their jurisdictions will become fiscally solvent.

Shortly after last month’s elections when Republicans recaptured Congress, I had planned a post, urging Republicans not to repeat the mistake they made just after the 1994 elections when, in the race for House Majority Whip, they rejected the principled Bob Walker for the opportunistic Tom DeLay.  That one-time Republican leader was back in the news as I prepared to travel to San Francisco to celebrate Thanksgiving with the most important person in the state (my now 2-year-old nephew); the Texan “was convicted [last] Wednesday on charges he illegally funneled corporate money to Texas candidates in 2002“.

While I believe it’s likely the conviction will be overturned on appeal, I did not shed a tear for DeLay.  More than any other Republican leader in the House, he was responsible for abandoning “The Spirit of ’94″ and focusing on building a permanent Republican majority, not on conservative principles, but on lobbyist connections (and financing).  Had he not led the Republicans away from the small-government principles which secured their election in 1994, they may well have had a more lasting majority.

For Tom Delay Republicans, politics was about power not principles.  And in a republic, you can’t hold onto power very long unless you stand for something beyond its maintenance.

Fortunately, the incoming majority party’s slate lacked any Tom DeLays, with its leadership representing a diverse array of conservative opinion.  While incoming Speaker John Boehner supported the TARP bailouts, incoming House Republican Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling,  in the words of former House Majority Leader Dick Armey,  having “the best voice in opposition” to TARP.

There will be no Tom DeLays in the Republican leadership of the 112th Congress.  And that’s a good thing for the GOP.

FROM THE COMMENTS: DaveP reminds us, “The other thing to remember about Tom DeLay is what an abject failure his ‘K-Street’ program actually turned out to be in practice. Never forget that.” Good point.

Unlike Bruce Kesler, I lack the time to read the entire Pentagon Study on repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Would it that it would come out after I defend my dissertation just over a week from now.  Joined by Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates today urged the Senate to repeal the so-called ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law this year“:

Gates said any change causes short-term disruptions, but that the military can handle longer-term impacts. He added that he’s recommending repeal of the law after fully studying the potential impact on military readiness, including the impact on unit cohesion, recruiting and retention, and other issues critical to the performance of the force.

To be sure, some troops in combat units raised concerns, but substantial majorities of servicemembers overall have no issues about serving with gay people, with 69 percent of those who responded to the survey believing “they had already served alongside a gay person.  Of those who believed that, 92 percent said their units were able to work together and 8 percent said the units functioned poorly as a result.”

Kesler points out that “the report calls for gradual implementation” which is, as it should be.  Mullen said

. . . he agreed with Gates that “this is a policy change that we can make and we can do it in a relatively low-risk fashion,” given time to prepare forces and leaders for new rules and expectations.

Given this report and the military brass’s commitment to implement repeal, consistent with the legislation before the Senate in this gradual manner, which all the various services to develop a policy for implementing the new policy, it’s imperative that the Senate act swiftly on repeal, so that the military brass can do their job and put that policy in place as quickly as possible.

For an opposing view, check out what this McCain has to say.