iPandora

Newt Gingrich:

Americans should look carefully at the anti-politician, anti-government mood exhibited in California last week.

This vote is the second great signal that the American people are getting fed up with corrupt politicians, arrogant bureaucrats, greedy interests and incompetent, destructive government.

The elites ridiculed or ignored the first harbinger of rebellion, the recent tea parties. While it will be harder to ignore this massive anti-tax, anti-spending vote, they will attempt to do just that.

Voters in our largest state spoke unambiguously, but politicians and lobbyists in Sacramento are ignoring or rejecting the voters’ will, just as they are in Albany, N.Y., and Trenton, N.J. The states with huge government machines have basically moved beyond the control of the people. They have become castles of corruption, favoritism and wastefulness. These state governments are run by lobbyists for the various unions through bureaucracies seeking to impose the values of a militant left. Elections have become so rigged by big money and clever incumbents that the process of self-government is threatened.

Albany is even more corrupt and dysfunctional. The special interests that own the legislators in both parties have been exploiting New York for two generations. They have impoverished the Upstate region to the point where it is a vast zone of no jobs and no opportunities. Their predatory tax and bureaucratic union behavior is beginning to cripple New York City. More and more successful New Yorkers are leaving the state. In the face of multiple crises, Gov. David Paterson has shown himself incapable of carrying out reform.

…the machines don’t care because all they want to do is own the wreckage.

…look again at the 62 percent-plus majority in California in favor of smaller government and lower taxes.

In the great tradition of political movements rising against arrogant, corrupt elites, there will soon be a party of people rooting out the party of government. This party may be Republican; it may be Democratic; in some states it may be a third party. The politicians have been warned.

Read all about it: States have become castles of corruption

But Dan Walters, in the Sacramento Bee,  says we shouldn’t be as upset as we are:

When… new taxes expire in a couple of years, Californians’ relative tax burden could also drop further – but if the economy is rising by then, it could also mean a surge of revenues even when the increased rates disappear.

If nothing else, these data indicate that while income and sales tax rates may make a difference, the economy is the biggest factor in how much tax Californians pay in aggregate.

When the economy rises, so do tax collections, and when it falls, revenues fall with it.

Walters asks if Californians taxes are too high or too low.

It’s not that the taxes are too high or too low, it’s the socio-political philosophy which supports such confiscatory policies and uses the money to pad pockets and entrench power.

Heather MacDonald in the Wall Street Journal:

Some in Mr. Wright’s crew of charlatans have already had their moments in the spotlight; others are less well known. They form part of the tragic academic project of justifying self-defeating underclass behavior as “authentically black.”

Obama is coming out hard against the man he previously dismissed with “Oh, him? He’s just crazy sometimes. But he doesn’t mean any harm…”

The wise saying that one’s walk talks louder than their talk talks is bringing all Obama’s chickens home to roost.

He spent 20 years listening to this vitriol and hatred spewing against the very nation which has blessed him, his ungrateful and narcissistic wife, and his children. He chose to allow this man to be a confidant and counselor. He exposed his children to a hate-monger.

And we trust him to make good and sound judgments for our entire nation?

Moving on to other news:

I’ve never much cared for Newt since his affair. A man who cannot love his wife is a man I cannot trust.

But this is against his philosophy and all the good things he has stood for:

This is mostly right:

“If enough of us demand action from our leaders…”

After all, it is our leaders who have not allowed us to harness the natural resources so plentiful in our land.

This is all wrong:

“…we can spark the innovation we need.”

Thomas Edison did not ask government to invent a light bulb. He did it himself.

Many liberals are claiming now that the “deregulated” energy companies need government oversight to ensure they are innovating enough and not gouging their customers.

If they were indeed deregulated there would not be an issue. It is the fact that the energy industry has to ask permission of the government before their allowed to breathe, let alone innovate. A deregulated energy industry would be drilling in ANWR right now, without harming animal populations (because who wants the backlash from that). We would have been building Nuclear power plants by the dozens and they’d be efficient and reliable and safe, the way they have been.

Instead we’re stuck with too little growth and subsequently higher and higher costs for energy.

Scoop your brains back into your skull Newt. Government is never the answer.