How so?

He went through the state ledgers line by line and, applying some basic principles and setting a few reasonable priorities, came up with a proposed budget of $5.1 billion.  Which, unlike the budget proposed by the Nevada legislature, stays within our current revenue projections. 

Oh, wait, that’s right:  the state legislature still has not released their budget for public discussion.  Even though they’ve been meeting up in Carson City for months.

Said a legislator who asked not to be named, “I mean, come ON, guys.  This stuff is, like, really hard.”

Says Geoffrey Lawrence, the fiscal expert at NPRI who put the proposed budget together, ”The reason the legislature and governor haven’t been able to balance the budget is that they’ve been unable or unwilling to set priorities.”

Now we wait to hear what the Economic Forum has to say.  We expect they will project lower tax-revenue than previously anticipated.  And that lawmakers will then propose record or near-record tax increases.

If they do, remind them of the four basic principles that provided the basis for NPRI’s budget:  sensible prioritizing, consistent application of government rules and taxes, agency thrift, and “last in, first out” (the elimination of some programs created and funded by Nevada’s record 2003 tax increases – which never should have happened).

Title:  Obama’s First 100 Days:  Higher Spending. More Debt. New Taxes. Broken Promises.

Yep, that about sums it up.

Just a snippet:

Day 1 — January 20: In his Inaugural address, President Obama makes a noteworthy commitment to the American taxpayer:
 
“And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”

Or two:

Day 41 — March 1: The Obama administration foreshadows another broken promise when Peter Orszag, appearing on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, claims the 8,000 earmarks in the 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009 are “last year’s business. We just need to move on.” The statement by Orszag in not consistent with Obama’s campaign promise made in the first presidential debate:
 
“And, absolutely, we need earmark reform. And when I’m president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.” (Sept. 26, 2008. First Presidential Debate, Oxford, Miss.)

RTWT.

Read about President Sarkozy’s comments on capitalism here.  The Newsmax piece starts with this:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy says that the economic maelstrom that has captivated the world’s attention for the last 17 months is “not a crisis of capitalism” but, in actuality, a breakdown of a system that has “drifted away from capitalism’s most fundamental values.”

For a re-cap of how the U.S. drifted, here’s a pretty good (short) op-ed from the WaPo (August).  Title:  Is Capitalism Dead?  The market that failed was not exactly free.

Sen. Reid       202-224-3542

Sen. Ensign     202-224-6244

Rep. Heller     202-225-6155

Numbers for the “Mod Squad” in the Senate:

Evan Bayh (IN): 202-224-5623
Mark Begich (AK): 202-224-3004
Michael Bennet (CO): 202-224-5852
Thomas Carper (DE): 202-224-2441
Kay Hagan (NC): 202-224-6342
Claire McCaskill (MO): 202-224-6154
Mary Landrieu (LA): 202-224-5824
Joe Lieberman (CT): 202-224-4041
Ben Nelson (NE): 202-224-6551
Jeanne Shaheen (NH): 202-224-2841

Also… these Republicans are on the fence:

Arlen Specter (PA): 202-224-4254
Olympia Snowe (ME): 202-224-5344

There is no denying that this budget contains enormous spending increases and will lead to unprecedented levels of national debt.  And Obama’s ”spending cuts” are nowhere to be found.  (Where is the promised scalpel, sir?!)  For example: 

– Obama proposes to move some items from the “discretionary” to “mandatory” spending category, but that is just re-arranging chairs.

– About half the total “savings” come from tax increases.

– Another large chunk of “savings” is really just money ($170 billion a year) that won’t be spent in Iraq after 2012.  But the Bush administration never planned to extend anything like the current levels of spending beyond 2012.  It’s not “saving” to not spend money that was NEVER going to be spent.

Fake savings and tax increases aside, this budget is scary because it is a permanent expansion of the federal government as a percent of GDP.  The simple chart on page 12 sums it up very nicely.  De Rugy, an expert in her field, predicts “slower growth rates, higher unemployment rates, lower standards of living, and higher levels of poverty.”

Change is definitely on the way, folks.  And you better hope your family is spared.

Konichiwa!   [Jim Manzi]

Yesterday, while Congress and the media were obsessed with the $165 million AIG bonus outrage, the Fed decided to create another $1.2 trillion of U.S. currency. Numbers like this can seem absurd. How much bigger is $1.2 trillion than $165 million? Think about what gaining or losing $1,000 would mean to you. $1.2 trillion is to $165 million as $7 million is to $1,000. That’s how much more important the Fed’s action was.

Financiers have a fancy name for what the Fed did — “quantitative easing”. When you hear some kind of gee-whiz phrase in the finance industry that sounds kind of like something you understand, but somehow isn’t really clear, then it’s a lead pipe cinch that that you’re being had. Quantitative easing means that the Fed creates new currency out of thin air, and then uses it to buy assets. The moment after this happens nothing has changed about the real economy except that there is more currency. What do you think happens then? More dollars + the same assets = more dollars per asset = inflation.

If you’re in a deflationary period, the idea is that this is good because you head off some of the deflation. The hope is that this makes banks more likely to lend, “gets the economy moving again”, etc. Does this sound at all familiar to you?

Welcome to Japan.

03/19 04:26 PMShare

(Note:  in Liberalspeak, “may” = “will”)

She cites “job growth” as the reason for “keeping the door open” in this extended season of stimulus.  And here I thought saving and creating jobs was the meat and potatoes of Stimulus ~ Part I.

No, silly!  That was just a teaser.  A mere morsel.  A yummy bite-sized bacon-wrapped appetizer.

Pelosi and Friends are now going to start cooking up the next course – the one that will really, Really fix everything – for your consumption.

If anyone feels the need to puke, the bathroom is that way —————->

The article attributes these statistics to the recent housing bust.  I’d feel pretty safe guessing that major valley wide layoffs were/are a factor as well.

Here’s an interesting developer anecdote from the article:

[Laurence Hallier]’s $600 million Panorama Towers complex was a tremendous success at its inception three years ago. The first of his four planned residential skyscrapers sold out in six months; the second, which opened in 2007, sold out in 12 weeks. As the third tower neared completion last fall, Hallier had sold 92% of its units. Then the recession hit, and only half the units ended up closing. Hallier says it will take years to break even, and plans for the fourth tower have been delayed indefinitely.

“In his budget request for 2010, President Obama will announce plans to devise a new strategy to find another solution to deal with the nation’s nuclear waste that does not include storing it in Nevada.”

This is a shame if so.  The Yucca Mountain project currently employs hundreds of people and stands to employ thousands more, not to mention the nearly $100 billion it would bring into the hurting state economy.

The operation of nuclear energy plants and the transportation, recycling, and storage of spent nuclear fuel can be done quite safely these days - in fact is done safely all over Europe - but apparently Harry Reid is not going to let the facts get in the way of politics-per-usual and a Wednesday press release.  (More on the latest with Yucca here.)

This is the second time in less than three weeks an Obama agenda item has dealt a heavy blow to Nevada’s economy.  What was the first, you ask?  This offhand comment recently made at a townhall meeting:

“You are not going to be able to give out these big bonuses until you’ve paid taxpayers back, you can’t get corporate jets, you can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers dime.”

Rich Becker wrote an excellent piece on the fallout of that comment, which summed up is this:

Companies are now scrambling to avoid the “stigma” of holding company functions in Las Vegas and millions of dollars have been lost due to cancelled rooms and convention events.  (These organizations aren’t really cancelling the events; they’re just relocating them.  To sunny California, mostly.)  And the tremendous loss of room revenue, convention business, enertainment dollars, and gaming revenue is going to lead to even more layoffs than Nevada’s already seen.

So where are Harry Reid (and Dina Titus) with their outrage and big press releases when Nevada’s economy really needs them?  Busy rubbing elbows with a president who clearly doesn’t give a damn about the what’s best for the Silver State.

I guess Nevada is now “blue” in more ways than one.

But don’t just stand there and cry, good citizens.  You can do something:

http://dumpreid.com/