Only Public Sector Layoffs are "Cynical"

NewsNM note - After more than two years of devastating job losses in virtually every industry in the private sector, the chickens are starting to come home to roost in the fat, bloated, and lethargic public sectors in every state. In typical fashion, editors at Progressive Magazine express the fervent desire that the least productive group of workers in society (public employees) be rendered OFF LIMITS to the same sorts of economic down cycles that damage all other participants in working society. Below is a portion of the ramblings of a Marxist dreamer. Progressive Editor Matthew Rothschild waxes eloquent on the injustice of government employees sharing the tough times like everyone else....

Matthew Rothschild

Progressive.org - The attack is cynical in so many ways. First, as McEntee noted, “The problem in the economy has not been created by public workers. It was created by Wall Street.” Second, it’s not as though any public sector workers are getting filthy rich like the Wall Street bankers who got bailed out and are now back to bathing in ridiculous bonuses. Third, the attack on public sector workers is an attack on the idea that there should be a decent middle class in this country. If everyone’s wages and benefits have to be reduced to those offered by the stingiest private sector boss, you can kiss the middle class goodbye. Read full column here:

Only Public Sector Layoffs are "Cynical"

York: Brief Moment of Power

Byron York

Townhall - As Republicans take power in the House and play a more influential role in the Senate, it's good to think back a year. As 2010 began, it was not at all clear that big Republican victories were on the way -- only that the GOP was at its lowest point in a long, long time. Roundly defeated in 2008, House Republicans were powerless to stop a huge Democratic majority from passing the national healthcare bill in November 2009.
Then, in late December of that year, Senate Republicans were just as powerless to stop a filibuster-proof majority of 60 Democrats from pushing that far-reaching and deeply unpopular piece of legislation through the Senate. With the passage of Obamacare, GOP lawmakers learned what defeat really meant. The country is still learning the full extent of the damage. A new analysis by the Washington Post shows that a provision of Obamacare dealing with high-risk patients is attracting far fewer participants than expected but still costs vastly more than projected -- a bad omen for the law's other programs. Read full column here:

York: Brief Moment of Power

The Science of Forecasting

Armstrong Williams

Townhall - The science of foretelling was apparently revered by the ancients. Examples abound of oracles divining the fates of wise men and kings. Mighty warriors, Odysseus and Agamemnon would not dare sally forth less the portents augured in their favor. The balance of chances measured in scattered bones, animal entrails or the position of the firmament still live on in today’s folklore. But in most of the Western world, fortune telling has lost its potency – that is unless the fortune teller happens to be a scientist, pollster, or economist.

Keynsian Economist

The invention of science and statistics has replaced old-school fortune telling in very insidious ways. Now, while careful to disclaim – past performance is no guarantee of future results – hucksters of all sorts try to sell us stuff by pointing to long term trends. In fact, America’s current state of economic recession was caused by a confidence born of scientific analysis. Supposedly, we all believed, housing prices would never fall. After all, they had risen steadily for over eighty years. Very few people alive and relevant today remembered the last time when the U.S. housing market went bust. Those people who lost their homes in 1933 are no longer around to delivery any cautionary tales.  Read full column here:

The Science of Forecasting

Governor Scott: The Axis of Unemployment

Rick Scott

Bloomberg - Rick Scott, a former health-care executive who spent a record $78 million running for Florida governor, was sworn in with promises to attack the “axis of unemployment” in a state with the fourth-highest U.S. jobless rate. The Republican political novice vowed to make Florida the “most favorable business climate in the world” by addressing what he said were three impediments to job creation: taxation, regulation and litigation. “Prosperity comes from the private sector and only from the private sector,” Scott, 58, said today in his inauguration speech in Tallahassee. The 45th governor of the fourth-most-populous state said he would sign an executive order today to create the Office of Fiscal Accountability and Regulatory Reform to determine the impact of regulation on job creation. He reiterated campaign promises to eliminate Florida’s business tax and lower property levies by 19 percent. Read full story here:

Governor Scott: The Axis of Unemployment

Obamacare Stops Construction of 45 New Hospitals

From the weeklystandard.com -Under the headline, "Construction Stops at Physician Hospitals," Politico reports today that "Physician Hospitals of America says that construction had to stop at 45 hospitals nationwide or they would not be able to bill Medicare for treatments." Stopping construction at doctor-owned hospitals might not seem like the best way to boost the economy or to promote greater access and choice in health care, but that exactly what Obamacare is doing.  Kenneth Artz of the Heartland Institute explains, "Section 6001 of the health care law effectively bans new physician-owned hospitals (POHs) from starting up, and it keeps existing ones from expanding." Politico adds, "Friday [New Year's Eve] marked the last day physician-owned hospitals could get Medicare certification covering their new or expanded hospitals, one of the latest provisions of the reform law to go into effect."

Obamacare Stops Construction of 45 New Hospitals

Sheriff Paul Babeu Slams Napolitano's Afghan Trip



Sheriff Paul Babeu

 From gatewaypundit.com -Arizona Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu slammed Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for visiting Afghanistan to lecture them about border security while the US border with Mexico is compromised and not secure.  “It’s outrageous… Napolitano, who’s charged with the security of our country. Who’s over in foreign countries now. She’s the Homeland Security Secretary. She’s not the Secretary of State. She of anybody should be sounding the alarm and talking about security threats and she’s the one carrying out the “political speak” of the president saying this border is more secure than ever before. Meanwhile the threat that we face in Arizona and literally for our nation’s security I believe is a far greater national security threat to our nation’s security than Iraq, than Afghanistan, than any of these other places.”`   Video and more here

Sheriff Paul Babeu Slams Napolitano's Afghan Trip

NM Citizen Poll: Cut Spending

Rio Grande Foundation - Recently, the Rio Grande Foundation published a policy paper outlining more than $280 million in specific spending cuts designed to help Governor Martinez and legislators close New Mexico’s budget deficit. Then, throughout December, we gave average New Mexicans a chance to weigh in on which cuts they supported and how strongly they wanted to see the cuts made. Survey respondents were asked to rank their preferred cuts on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being the strongest desire to see an item cut).

More than 2,000 people took the opportunity to weigh in and the results are as follows: Saving $20 million annually by cutting the state work force by 2,000 was the most strongly supported with a rating average of 8.08; Saving $60 million annually by repealing SB 33 which increased the costs of public works projects around New Mexico followed close behind with an average rating of 7.91; Saving $6.4 million by diverting probationers and parolees who are revoked for technical violations of their supervision, not new offenses, from prison, scored 7.79; Diverting drug possession offenders from prison at a savings of $13 million garnered a score of 7.73;

Saving $30 million by capping the cost of New Mexico’s 25% reimbursement for films made in the state scored 7.34; Shutting down the Rail Runner at a savings of $20 million annually scored 6.44; and

The only budget cut items that scored below 5 were shutting down half of New Mexico’s branch campuses with a score of 4.81 and raising tuition to the national average which scored 4.71.

Read full story here:

NM Citizen Poll: Cut Spending

Slowdowns? European Public Union Tactic

Kevin Hassett

Bloomberg - By Kevin Hassett - Europeans have grown accustomed to seeing government workers shut down their countries when provoked. At this time of huge deficits from Washington to the smallest towns, government workers in the U.S. also face significant cutbacks. Americans may have had their first taste of what that will mean. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Governor David Paterson are both calling for an investigation of allegations that city workers intentionally dragged out the cleanup of the Dec. 26 blizzard as a way to protest cuts in the city budget. The New York Post, citing City Councilman Dan Halloran, reported that some snow-plow drivers skipped streets on their routes or kept their plows too high to clear streets.

In October, the Bloomberg administration said it would eliminate 200 supervisory positions in the Sanitation Department and hire 100 entry-level workers to lower salary, benefit and overtime costs by about $20 million, part of an effort to close a $3.3 billion deficit in the 2011 budget. The mayor is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.

Slowdowns? European Public Union Tactic

Two Californias: Coming to a State Near You

Thomas Sowell said in a recent column: Dr. Victor Davis Hanson's quietly chilling article, "Two Californias," in National Review Online, ought to be read by every American who is concerned about where this country is headed. California is leading the way, but what is happening in California is happening elsewhere-- and is a slow poison that is being largely ignored. Professor Hanson grew up on a farm in California's predominantly agricultural Central Valley. Now, as he tours that area, many years later, he finds a world as foreign to the world he knew as it is from the rest of California today-- and very different from the rest of America, either past or present. Here is the article:

Two Californias: Coming to a State Near You

ANWR Still Off Limits: Oil Approaches 27 Month High

U.S. Energy Policy

Bloomberg - Oil traded near a 27-month high in New York on signs that the economic recovery is gathering momentum and reining in excess fuel stockpiles. U.S. crude inventories probably fell a fifth week, a Bloomberg News survey showed before an Energy Department report tomorrow. Futures advanced as high as $92.58 a barrel in New York yesterday after the Institute for Supply Management’s U.S. factory index climbed to the highest in seven months. European manufacturing also grew more than estimated, powered by an export-led expansion in Germany. “The actual situation remains quite bullish after some supportive figures on the U.S. economy,” said Hannes Loacker, an analyst at Raiffeisen Bank International AG in Vienna. “But for the next couple of weeks it will be hard for crude to move substantially higher as fears about Chinese growth exert some drag, and the euro debt crisis will be back on the table.” Crude for February delivery traded at $91.60 a barrel, up 5 cents, in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 10:30 a.m. London time. Read full story here:

ANWR Still Off Limits: Oil Approaches 27 Month High