links for 2008-11-26

The California Legislature's outgoing class debated, complained and pointed fingers of blame Tuesday – but in the end, it did nothing about the state's massive budget gap.

A last-gasp effort to ease a projected $27.8 billion shortfall over 19 months ended with a whimper as the Assembly, voting largely along party lines, killed a $17 billion Democratic package of tax hikes and budget cuts. The Senate also rejected the package.

California's car tax would have tripled under the proposal, to 2 percent, thus reigniting a hotly controversial issue that helped spark the recall of former Gov. Gray Davis in 2003.
++++++
The GOP held firm on no new taxes

Here's my thought on his team. Summers, Geithner, and Romer will all recommend no tax hikes in a recession. Maybe for Keynesian reasons; maybe a nod to supply-siders. Obama talked about a liberal-conservative consensus. But what's especially encouraging is the appointment of Ms. Romer, who easily could serve as CEA head in a Republican administration (just like Geithner could have been McCain's Treasury man).
++++++
Center-right economics team. Obama moving to the center?

President-elect Barack Obama will keep Defense Secretary Robert Gates in that job for at least a year, according to an official familiar the two men's discussions.

Obama is expected to announce the selection of Gates and other members of a national security brain trust next week. Gates has served as President George W. Bush's defense chief for two years.

Gates, a moderate with long-standing ties to Republican administrations and the Bush family, would fulfill an Obama pledge to include a Republican in his Cabinet.

Retaining Gates provides stability for a stretched military fighting two wars during the turbulent changeover in administrations. Gates once said it was inconceivable that he would stay on past the close of Bush's term on Jan. 20.

But the 65-year-old former spymaster had recently turned mum in public on the circumstances under which he would stay, even briefly, in an Obama administration.
++++++
Left ain't going to like this much…..

So, Kathleen Parker has determined that getting rid of social conservatives and shelving the values they fight for is the solution to what ails the Republican Party (“Giving Up on God,” Nov. 19). Isn’t that a little like Benedict Arnold handing George Washington a battle plan to win the Revolution?

Whatever she once was, Ms. Parker is certainly not a conservative anymore, having apparently realized it’s a lot easier to be popular among your journalistic peers when your keyboard tilts to the left. She writes that “armband religion” — those of us who “wear our faith on our sleeve,” I suppose, or is it meant to compare socially conservative Christians to Nazis? — is “killing the Republican Party.” Lest readers miss the point, she literally spells it out. The GOP’s big problem? G-O-D.

N-O-N-S-E-N-S-E.
+++++++
Kathleen Parker who?

The fight to be the next face of the Republican party — or at least the next chairman of the Republican National Committee — has been defined so far by a cavalcade of announced and potential candidates and a dearth of individuals with the star power to emerge as the frontrunner.

"The race for RNC chairman is fluid and likely will be right up through the actual vote in January," said one Republican strategist who is closely following the race. "It is highly unlikely that any 'superstar' is going to jump into the race."
+++++++
Flap says it is between Chip Saltsman and Michael Steele

She better watch out. The tolerance bullies are not going to be pleased.
++++++
Indeed they won't

Finally, when courts usurp the role of the people, they inject cynicism and bitterness into America's body politic. In his dissent in Casey v. Planned Parenthood (1992), Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia put it this way: "[B]y foreclosing all democratic outlet for the deep passions this issue [legalized abortion] arouses, by banishing the issue from the political forum that gives all participants, even the losers, the satisfaction of a fair hearing and an honest fight, by continuing the imposition of a rigid national rule instead of allowing for regional differences, the Court merely prolongs and intensifies the anguish."

Plainly this is what we have seen with abortion. With the latest intervention by the California Supreme Court, it is beginning to look the same for same-sex marriage. How much healthier our politics would be if those so convinced of the rightness of their views would have equal faith in the decency of their fellow Americans — and their openness to being persuaded

After all, the paper says he was a member for 12 years, so it seems like a pretty fair question to ask whether he started working to change the club's rules this summer, and then resigned, in preparation for his RNC chair candidacy.

That seems like a particularly relevant question when you recall that the case some GOPers made against Obama over his ties to Reverend Wright was that his supposed silence in the face of Wright's rantings should raise questions about Obama's patriotism.

What's more, The State said that Dawson resigned the club after it became known that the paper was getting ready to report his membership.

Either way, it's hard to see how it sends a winning message for the GOP to pick as its chief strategist and public face someone who was a member of a club where the first African American president in history apparently need not apply. Ah, those good old Repubs.
+++++++
Good point – even from the left

State GOP chairman Katon Dawson, who is campaigning to lead the national Republican Party organization, has resigned a 12-year membership in a whites-only Columbia country club.

Dawson said last week his continued membership at Forest Lake Club could become a distraction to his efforts to help win elections for Republicans in South Carolina.

He resigned Monday as The State pursued an article on his membership in the club and his role in an internal push to admit African-Americans as members.
+++++++
Game Over….

Since the 1980s, other influential capital city business and country clubs have abandoned membership restrictions based on race, gender or religion.

The nearly 80-year-old Forest Lake Club — whose deed has a whites-only restriction — has no black members, said four club members. They asked not to be identified because the club does not discuss its membership.

But a close reading of the court's one-page order suggests that gay-rights advocates may have lost a usually predictable ally in their effort to overturn Proposition 8.

"It definitely isn't a good sign," said UCLA Law Professor Brad Sears, an expert on sexual-orientation law.

After learning of Kennard's vote, he went back and read her concurring opinion in the court's historic 4-3 vote on May 15 that permitted gays to marry. It left him even more puzzled.

Whether a state ban on same-sex marriage is constitutional "is not a matter to be decided by the executive or legislative branch, or by popular vote, but is instead an issue of constitutional law for resolution by the judicial branch," Kennard wrote.

"Everything she writes in her concurrence is substantively what she will have to agree to in order to overturn Proposition 8," he said.
…others saw reason to suspect that Kennard may not be buying the argument that Proposition 8 was an improper revision of the state constitution.

A state investigator found no substance to an ethics complaint lodged against Gov. Sarah Palin but recommended ethics training for one person in her administration.

The complaint questioned whether Palin or members of her administration bent the rules to help Tom Lamal, a political supporter, get hired for a Fairbanks-area Department of Transportation job.

Andrée McLeod of Anchorage lodged the complaint in early August. She alleged Palin and others unduly influenced the hiring of Lamal as a DOT Northern Region right-of-way agent.

According to investigator Timothy Petumenos’ report, Lamal was DOT’s top pick for the state job but fell short of some requirements. Meanwhile, DOT was updating those requirements. Once that process was complete, Lamal was hired. The investigator found there was no improper influence brought to bear upon DOT and other state decision-makers in the Lamal case.
++++++
Another ethics smear against Sarah Palin – vindicated again

There is now a palpable fear that global investors may start to shun British debt as the budget deficit rockets to £118bn – 8 per cent of GDP – or charge a much higher price to cover default risk.

The cost of insuring against the bankruptcy of the British state has broken out – upwards – over the last month. Yes, credit default swaps (CDS) are dodgy instruments, but they are the best stress barometer that we have.

Today they reached 86 basis points, near Portuguese debt in the league table. For good reason. Alistair Darling has had to admit that the British economy faces the most sudden economic collapse since World War Two, and the worst budget deficit of any major country in the world.