Linkage

Should taxes and spending be linked in Congress?   We hear endless talk about "offsets" and "pay as you go"  every time budgets and authorization bills come up.  Some favored constituencies get a tax dedicated to just one thing.  The gasoline tax is dedicated to (earmarked for) road building, so the road builders don't have to fight for funding every year. It's nice to be a road builder. 
   May it not be better to consider taxes and spending separately?  Taxes need to be low enough to keep the economy running and tamp down political unhappiness that leads to votings out, civil insurrection and other unpleasantness.  Most of the time this means that taxes cannot be raised much without serious consequences.  Certainly Obama's call for a tax hike on "millionaires and billionaires" isn't exciting the broader electorate.
   Expenditures rise to meet income  (Parkenson's law).  There is an infinite amount of worthy causes that can suck up all the money in the world.  But nobody is that rich.  Effective government spends money on the absolutely necessary things and stops after that.  Otherwise they go broke.  Witness Europe, Greece, Spain, Iceland, Ireland and the US.  
  So the common thing heard today "If we pass your appropriation, then you have to pass our tax hike to pay for it."  is just another way of saying "No". 

How much Defense do we Have? Do we Need?

Sequester!  It's out there in the dark, waiting to take dollars away from defense.  Fox had Sen Lindsey Graham on this morning talking against sequester.  He harked back to the early days of WWII when our troops had to drill with broomsticks, before the country got tooled up for war. 
   I want to hear about how much real strength we have today and how much we really need.  Anyone know where I could find the number of combat soldiers, tanks, artillery pieces, Navy warships, fighter planes, aircraft carriers, helicopters and transport aircraft the US military owns today?   And how many it would own under sequester?
   Then we could have a public debate over how much we ought to have.   After fixing the amount of arms and armed men we ought to have, then appropriate enough money to pay for it. 
   The Congresscritters  are debating how many dollars to pour into defense, not how much defense we ought to have.  Many of them are thinking about how much nice defense money will fall into their districts.
   Dollars don't bear arms. 

Undecideds? Who is still undecided?

I'm listening to TV newsies talking about the huge number of undecided voters out there.  Yeah right.  All the voters I reach when phone banking are decided.  Mind is made up, and you can tell from tone of voice that they ain't gonna change their minds either. 
  When you hear a newsie talking about undecided voters  this year, you know he/she is clueless.

"A Fire Brand Departs From GM"

Headline in yesterday's Wall St Journal.  From the headline one can see that the Journal is not in favor.  The firebrand in question, Joel Ewanick, was GM's global marketing chief.   He had a $4.5 billion dollar ad buying budget at GM, which is not chicken feed.  According to a GM press release, he "resigned".  GM claims that Mr. Ewanick "failed to properly vet financial details of a European soccer sponsorship deal."
   Sounds like office politics stabs again.  Mr. Ewanick was lured to join GM only two years ago.  GM managed to hire him away from top marketing job with Nissan North America, a job he held for only 6 weeks.
    Looks like bankruptcy hasn't taught GM's suits much.  They still don't have any cars that people want to buy, customers deride them as "Govt Motors",  their sales are down, and  their stock is in the tank  But they have plenty of time for back biting.
  

WMUR is back on Time Warner cable

Apparently the suits got their act together and I can now watch channel 9 on cable.  Only took 'em a couple of weeks to figure out that carrying WMUR is beneficial to both parties, the TV station and the cable company. 

Mists of Avalon

It's an Arthurian fantasy, with the title from a novel of the same name by Marion Zimmer Bradley, a well known science fiction and fantasy author.  It tells the story thru the eyes of Morgen le Fay, who is Arthur's sister in this version of the King Arthur tale.  The priestesses of Avalon, supporters of an ancient goddess, are dueling with the Christians for control of Britain's destiny.  Arthur is but one tool in their tool kit.  We see a lot of Vivienne (high priestess) Igraine, (Arthur's mother) Morgause (all purpose troublemaker) all thru the viewpoint character Morgen.    Poor Morgen is merely carried from scene to scene like a TV camera on a dolly, she never gets to do much under her own power.  Lot of nice camera work, galloping horses, small boats pushing thru the mists of Avalon.  The plot is complex and not really understandable.  None of the cast are familiar to me. 

Face the Nation foot in mouth

Face the Nation was stirring the Penn State pot yet again.  They were fricasseeing the University president over the Jerry Sandusky affair.  The moderator asks the Penn State guy "Do you think this whole affair was the fault of to great an emphasis on football?" 
   Well, actual no I don't.  Penn State hired a child molester, that was mistake #1.  And when the crimes came to light, the molester's boss (Joe Paterno) didn't report them to the police and covered things up.  That was mistake #2.  These mistakes could have been made in every department of Penn State, or any other university.  It happened that the athletic department is guilty this time, but that's just bad luck, it could have been any other department.