Click on WORD or PDF for full content
Bill McGurn contrasts Jerry Brown and Chris Christie.
In his January 2011 inaugural address, California Gov. Jerry Brown declared it a “time to honestly assess our financial condition and make the tough choices.” Plainly the choices weren’t tough enough: Mr. Brown has just announced that he faces a state budget deficit of $16 billion—nearly twice the $9.2 billion he predicted in January. In Sacramento Monday, he coupled a new round of spending cuts with a call for some hefty new tax hikes.
In his own inaugural address back in January 2010, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie also spoke of making tough choices for the people of his state. For his first full budget, Mr. Christie faced a deficit of $10.7 billion—one-third of projected revenues. Not only did Mr. Christie close that deficit without raising taxes, he is now plumping for a 10% across-the-board tax cut.
It’s not just looks that make Mr. Brown Laurel to Mr. Christie’s Hardy. It’s also their political choices.
When the Obama administration’s Transportation Department called on California to cough up billions for a high-speed bullet train or lose federal dollars, Mr. Brown went along. In sharp contrast, when the feds delivered a similar ultimatum to Mr. Christie over a proposed commuter rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey, he nixed the project, saying his state just couldn’t afford it. …
… Our states today are conducting a profound and contentious rethink about the right level of taxes, spending and government. Most obvious is the battle for Wisconsin. There Republican Gov. Scott Walker finds himself pitted against public-sector unions that successfully forced a recall election for June 5 after the legislature adopted the governor’s package of labor reforms last spring.
Amid the turmoil—Democratic legislators fled the state to prevent a vote, while union-backed protesters occupied the Capitol—Mr. Walker looked weakened. Now he has taken the lead in polls. More than that, voters have taken the lesson: A recent Marquette University Law School poll showed only 12% of Wisconsin voters listing “restoring collective bargaining rights for public employees” as their priority. …
Since McGurn brought up Wisconsin, let’s have an extended look at the campaign that will culminate on June 5th. Ed Morrissey reports on recent polls.
Now that Democrats have ended their divisive recall primary in Wisconsin, one would expect the polling to show their nominee to be gaining some traction against sitting Governor Scott Walker. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett was considered the stronger of the Democrats challenging Walker in the unusual recall election, and polls just after the recall showed him nearly within the margin of error of the incumbent. This week, however, a new poll from We Ask America of over 1200 likely voters puts Walker on top by nine, 52/43: …
The labor movement and its left-wing allies in the Democratic Party thought they were doing something extremely clever when they reacted to their defeats at the hands of Scott Walker in the Wisconsin legislature by starting a recall campaign. The recall enabled the losers of the 2010 election where Walker and the GOP swept to power in the state to, in effect, get a do-over in which they could act as if the previous result didn’t really count. But as the latest polls from Wisconsin show, they are on the eve of a catastrophic loss that will not only leave Walker in power and stronger than ever but also deal the Democrats a crucial loss that may be a harbinger of more setbacks in the fall. …
David Weigel has a great piece on the Walker phenomenon over at Slate. As Weigel points out, Walker has built an extraordinary political following in the state, pulling together all the disparate elements in today’s Republican universe from tea party activists to megadonors. The result is a formidable political force that dominates the airwaves and inspires the grassroots.
It’s not clear who will win in June; as Weigel notes, Walker currently leads in the polls, but the race is still unpredictable. However, those who rely on the New York Times for their Wisconsin news won’t have any idea about some of the factors shaping this race; Weigel’s piece provides a healthy reality check for them. …
Here’s Weigel’s piece from Slate which gives a good feel for local attitudes.
If you get bored in Wisconsin, play a game. Drive a few miles through any neighborhood. Count the signs that read “We Stand With Scott Walker,” or “I Stand With Scott Walker,” or “Scott Walker: Believe in Wisconsin.” Try and figure out what the houses have in common.
You won’t. There are pieces of Walkerian flair outside of barns on Highway 41, near working-class ranch homes in Appleton, and in the tony part of Oshkosh that Sen. Ron Johnson calls home. On one stretch of Highway 26, somebody’s propped up an unused toilet with a sign reading, “Deposit recall petitions here.” Next to that, a Walker sign that crosses out half of the phrase “for governor” and adds “president.”
The public displays of affection for Walker can put you in mind of October 2008, when placing a HOPE poster or Shepard Fairey print in your window told neighbors about your politics and taste. The Walker gear is easily attained at one of the 20 “victory centers” promoted by the campaign. I stopped by half a dozen of them—local Republican offices temporarily converted to the cause. In the front of the Winnebago County office, a digital sign counted down the days to the June 5 recall. A cardboard Walker stand-up faced visitors from behind a podium. …
… Walker’s supporters agree with a vehemence you rarely find in state elections. On Tuesday, as Walker—surprisingly—got nearly as many votes as the Democrats running against him, I visited a few polling places and met the people toting the free signs. Scott Perzentka, who runs a pier-building business, voted for Walker in Oshkosh, then headed back to his truck with Walker and biker’s-rights signs. Perzentka survived a horrific motorcycle crash in 2003. The experience made him a kind of activist. As he rebuilt his life, it also reinforced his belief that people had to earn what they had, and that unions existed to puff up the salaries of people who didn’t work.
“Seventy-five years ago they were out for the little guy,” he said, “and now they’re out for themselves.
Shikha Dalmia from Reason.
… what exactly has Walker done to deserve a backlash that, if successful, will make him only the third governor in the history of the nation ever to be recalled?
He confronted a $3.6 billion biennial deficit when he assumed office last year. Raising taxes was not an option: Wisconsin already has the 45th-worst overall business tax climate in the country, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.
So Walker did what a responsible bookkeeper would do: tackle the biggest driver of the fiscal crisis, public employee costs. …
Time for humor. Walter Jacobson blogs on the Boston Globe finally getting the story straight on Liz Warren’s lily white ancestors. She’s a red allright, just not an Indian.
… As you know, that Boston Globe story created a legend which lives on in the media despite having been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked at every level, and one from which even NEHGS has walked away.
The Globe finally gets around to correcting the story, but buries it in the “For the Record” correction section today:
Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story in the May 1 Metro section and the accompanying headline incorrectly described the 1894 document that was purported to list Elizabeth Warren’s great-great-great grandmother as a Cherokee. The document, alluded to in a family newsletter found by the New England Historic Genealogical Society, was an application for a marriage license, not the license itself. Neither the society nor the Globe has seen the primary document, whose existence has not been proven.
(Note: The correction references an article on May 1 which repeated the story; the correction now is appended at the end of the original online version.)
That’s it? After all the trouble The Globe caused, necessitating countless hours by lowly bloggers to correct the falsehood. …
More fun as Politico finds a piece from Fordham University that describes Warren as a “woman of color.”
Elizabeth Warren has pushed back hard on questions about a Harvard Crimson piece in 1996 that described her as Native American, saying she had no idea the school where she taught law was billing her that way and saying it never came up during her hiring a year earlier, which others have backed up.
But a 1997 Fordham Law Review piece described her as Harvard Law School’s “first woman of color,” based, according to the notes at the bottom of the story, on a “telephone interview with Michael Chmura, News Director, Harvard Law (Aug. 6, 1996).”
The mention was in the middle of a lengthy and heavily-annotated Fordham piece on diversity and affirmative action and women. The title of the piece, by Laura Padilla, was “Intersectionality and positionality: Situating women of color in the affirmative action dialogue.”
“There are few women of color who hold important positions in the academy, Fortune 500 companies, or other prominent fields or industries,” the piece says. “This is not inconsequential. Diversifying these arenas, in part by adding qualified women of color to their ranks, remains important for many reaons. For one, there are scant women of color as role models. In my three years at Stanford Law School, there were no professors who were women of color. Harvard Law School hired its first woman of color, Elizabeth Warren, in 1995.” …
Andrew Malcolm has a “Narcississm Alert.”
It was probably to be expected from a monstrous political ego that considers himself among the top two presidents of the 21st century.
But faced with the apparently frightening possibility of losing his reelection bid, Barack Obama has inserted himself into the online White House bios of almost every president in the last nine decades. To somehow share and compare their achievements. At one point Obama even draws his wife into the biographical additions.
It would be funny if it wasn’t so hilarious. Remember the grandiose but short-lived little party hats that Richard Nixon designed for his special presidential guard unit?
Imagine the emotional insecurities of a grown man who would have henchman find and gratuitously insert even the faintest link between this 44th president and almost every president back to Calvin Coolidge –”On Feb. 22, 1924 Calvin Coolidge became the first president to make a public radio address to the American people…..President Obama became the first president to hold virtual gatherings and town halls.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt — “On August 14, 1935, President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act. Today the Obama Administration continues to protect seniors and ensure Social Security will be there for future generations.” …