Corrupt Bastards

This weekend belonged to the corrupt bastards in the mainstream media.

First, in this election season's second instance of a politically explosive voicemail left by someone who doesn't know how to hang up his phone (the first being from Jerry Brown's campaign for Governor of California), we were treated to a conversation between staff at a CBS affiliate in Alaska as they conspired to manufacture unflattering coverage of Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller.

On a Sunday morning talk show, Sarah Palin called them "corrupt bastards."

Now, the corrupt bastards at ABC News have been caught in their own lie.

In an admirable attempt at providing balanced, feisty, interesting and newsworthy election coverage, ABC invited Andrew Breitbart to be part of a Town Hall style panel of political figures and newsmakers before a live audience in Phoenix, Arizona. According to the invitation, the panel would be broadcast live on the web and on ABC as part of its election night programming.

I was going to send them a thank you note, but I didn't have time.

After pressure from the Left, ABC walked back its invitation, and issued a cowardly "clarification" that is at odds with its initial invitation. The clarification notes that Andrew Breitbart "will not be part of broadcast coverage" and "has not been asked to analyze election results for ABC News."

They invited Andrew Breitbart to be part of their election night coverage, but he is not going to be analyzing the results? As Andrew Breitbart asked, is ABC flying him to Phoenix so he can "perform avant-garde interpretive dance?"

In cowering before the Left's objection to balanced election night coverage, and allowing protesters to veto invitees' participation in an analytical panel, ABC is abandoning any semblance of balance, and therefore of credibility.

This is bigger than face time for Andrew Breitbart. When interest groups exclude certain viewpoints from consideration, they shape the national narrative. Of course Breitbart continues to have a forum outside of ABC News, just like Juan Williams now has a forum outside of NPR, but I'll bet you a dollar there isn't much cross-pollination between people who get their news from ABC/NPR and those who get it from Fox and the conservative new media.

The best way to get people to think what you want to them to think is to make sure they hear only what you want them to hear; putting Breitbart in purdah limits the opportunity to put a different perspective in front of the viewers, and helps ensure that it remains business as usual at ABC News.

This weekend belonged to the corrupt bastards in the mainstream media, but don't lose heart. Tuesday belongs to us.

90% of terrorism is just showing up

A would-be bomber fails to ignite his shoe. Another would-be bomber sets his underwear ablaze, and a third leaves an SUV packed with explosives in Times Square but gets just a few puffs of smoke for his trouble.

Breaking news today describes the interception of suspicious packages bound for America as either a dry run for a terrorist attack or a foiled terrorist attack.

Is our intelligence gathering this good, or are we lucky, or is it something else?

With the attention given to each failed terrorist attack on American soil, the fear and the new security procedures, it's hard to see how much more "bang for the buck" the terrorists would achieve if they succeeded in killing people.

Some commenters describe Afghani bombers as "hapless," as likely to blow themselves up as blow up a target, and these commenters think the hapless bomber trend will lead to an easy victory in Afghanistan.

I disagree. The bombers might have failed to blow up a target, but I don't think they failed at their mission.

They scare us, they force us to reveal security procedures, and, most importantly, they distract us from the most potent weapon in Islamism's war on Western Civilization: the suppression of free speech.

While we are taking our shoes off in airports and being subjected to increasingly embarassing airport security screenings (raise your hand if your muffin top has been mistaken for an explosives belt), radical Islam is quietly narrowing the scope of topics that can be publicly discussed.

Juan Williams' firing by NPR in the wake of a CAIR complaint is still fresh. How many people know that NPR sent a correspondent to a conference on ensuring positive portrayals of Islam in the media? How many of us remember the name of the cartoonist behind "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" who had to change her identity and disappear after a fatwa was issued against her life? How many of us are familiar with the plights of Mark Steyn and Geert Wilders, who are on trial (in Canada and The Netherlands respectively) for upsetting Muslims?

The Islamists don't need to invest in extensive training for their citizen bombers, because they don't need to bomb us into submission. They are already learning that they can change Western Civilization from within by manipulating cultural acceptance of certain sentiments.

With apologies to Woody Allen, 90% of terrorism is just showing up. Tape some cell phones together in a suspicious manner and put them in a teenager's pocket, and we won't notice that our foundational Constitutional freedom, the freedom of speech, is being eroded, and that there are more and more "out of business" signs in the marketplace of ideas.

NPR's arbitrary Ethics Code

According to NPR, Juan Williams' firing is justified by section V.10 of NPR's Ethics Code, which states that employees in the News Division:

...should not participate in shows electronic forums, or blogs that encourage punditry and speculation rather than fact-based analysis.

The legitimacy and enforceability of this provision rests on the assumption that there is an objective difference between punditry and speculation on the one hand, and fact-based analysis on the other. And frankly, there isn't.

Juan Williams is an analyst, not a reporter. Unlike a straight news reporter, an analyst doesn't recite the who-what-where to the audience and let them arrive at their own conclusions. An analyst is paid to draw conclusions, and drawing conclusions from a set of facts requires a certain amount of speculation, theory, supposition, and yes, "punditry."

In fact, whether an analyst is perceived to be engaging in speculation/punditry or engaging in fact-based analysis is entirely dependent on the confirmation bias of the viewer.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to believe things that confirm what you already think to be true. For example, confirmation bias in a person who already believes Tea Partiers to be racists would result in an increased tendency for that person to believe, without question, allegations of racism at Tea Party rallies. A discussion of racism in the Tea Party would appear to that person to be fact-based analysis, because in that person's mind, of course everyone knows Tea Partiers are racists.

By now, everyone is familiar with examples of fact-based analysis that won't get you fired from NPR, such as Nina Totenberg's suggestion that retributive justice should result in Jesse Helms and his family contracting AIDS, or Cokie Roberts' years of left-leaning punditry on the McLaughlin Group and the ABC network.

The difference between Nina Totenberg and Juan Williams is that Nina Totenberg takes positions that fit into the left-leaning worldview of NPR and its audience. She says what people already believe, and thus her words are treated as fact-based analysis consistent with NPR's Ethics Code. Anything that deviates from what NPR and its audience believe is, on the pther hand, speculation and punditry.

Cynical or subconscious, implicit or explicit, NPR's Ethics Code is an arbitrary device based on a nonexistent distinction, and this nonexistent distinction permits NPR to engage is selective, discriminatory enforcement.

NPR's arbitrary Ethics Code allows it to maintain the mantle of impartiality while it selectively dismisses personnel who step off the Liberal plantation or who, in the case of Juan Williams, upset NPR's masters at the Council for American Islamic Relations.

We are all Texans

The Yankees were defeated, and evil strides no more upon the land in pinstripes.

Congratulations to the Texas Rangers on their American League Championship victory!!

Marijuana, Inc.

California's November 2 ballot contains an initiative, Proposition 19, that would legalize the cultivation, possession, and consumption of marijuana by adults in California.

What you may not know is that it's already legal to possess and smoke marijuana in California.

California has a medical marijuana law that enables patients to obtain pot from storefront dispensaries upon the recommendation of their doctors. This compassionate medical use is not, however, limited to patients with intractable pain or loss of appetite from conditions such as AIDS or cancer. There are physicians, easily found with a perfunctory web search, who will write you a recommendation for medical marijuana to treat conditions including anxiety, stress, headaches, and insomnia. (I know this because I once worked for a boss who was an extraordinarily miserable human being, and before my boss moved on I was exploring every option for stress relief.)

In other words, if you are a carbon-based life form in California, California law entitles you to smoke pot. You just have to show a little initiative.

So what on earth is the initiative really about?

First, a data point: union membership has been declining steadily, from about a third after World War II to 20% in 1983 to 12.3% in 2009.

But the unions are clever, and have found a new growth industry in marijuana. Teamsters Local 70 has already unionized 40 medical marijuana growers, and the City of Oakland has authorized industrial-scale marijuana cultivation, which will provide the Teamsters with a new crop of workers to unionize.

Meanwhile, California's environmental policies, which favor plants and non-human mammals over humans, are turning vast segments of California's agricultural acreage into a dustbowl in order to protect the habitat of a useless bit of bait fish called the Delta Smelt.

Next time you are in the produce section or canned vegetable section of your local supermarket, take a look at the quantity and variety of products from California. Tomatoes, almonds, peaches, avocados; California feeds the world. Unless California gets its priorities straight and gives Central Valley farmers the water they need to produce the fruits and vegetables that grace America's dinner tables, marijuana may soon be California's last remaining agricultural export. You will have to get used to paying usurious prices for tasteless produce of dubious quality transported from overseas, but there will be plenty of California-grown ganja available to help you smoke away your troubles.

Vote No on Proposition 19, because California can't afford to get any dumber than it already is.

Islamism's war on Western values claims another victim

Juan Williams, a longtime analyst with NPR, was fired on Wednesday for admitting that he experiences fear when he sees Muslims aboard passenger aircraft.

His opening remarks have proven prescient:

"Political correctness can lead to some kind of paralysis where you don't address reality."

By firing Juan Williams for having uttered an uncomfortable but undeniably true and indisputably relevant sentiment, NPR has embraced the values (if not the tactics) of those who commit murder over offensive cartoons: people who offend must be punished.

So much for freedom of thought. In the marketplace of ideas, NPR has established itself as a storefront not worth visiting.

All your memories are belong to us

"Give it away, give it away, give it away now," a shirtless Anthony Kiedis commands, and who can say no? But have you paused to consider that you may be giving up control over your own history when you give away information through online social networking?

The Wall Street Journal has been running a fascinating series on digital privacy called What They Know. The October 18 installment revealed that many popular Facebook applications are transmitting user data to third parties, including marketers.

I confess, up until now I haven't been experiencing much outrage over the Facebook Privacy Violations du Jour. Part of me (primarily the part of me that isn't on Facebook) thinks: of course Facebook is selling your data. Facebook is not a charity, all those server farms cost money, and the only people willing to pay for your data are people who hope to use that data to sell you stuff. Boo hoo, end of the world, just don't buy their stuff if you don't want to.

But I'm learning it's potentially much more pernicious than that.

Do you ever post photos on Facebook or Twitter? Check the Twitter and Facebook Terms of Service; if you post a photo, you are giving Facebook and Twitter a license to use that photo. Twitter comes right out and says that their rights to the photo include the right to adapt it, Facebook doesn't say what their intentions are. But who would want to mess with our photos?

Aza Raskin thinks he knows. Raskin, the Creative Lead at Firefox, gave a speech at the University of Michigan School of Information which makes a scary connection between the plasticity of human memory and our loss of control over the personal information we post on online social networks.

Raskin posits that marketers will soon seek to monetize our digital lives with product placements in social networking content. A benign form of this might be a beverage company manipulating the photos from a popular party so that its labels are on all the bottles.

Trouble is, human memory is neither a snapshot nor a lock box; with the right kind of suggestion, you can remember things that never happened, in great detail. As creepy as the example above is, the world will not end if a bunch of people are convinced that they had a really good time while drinking Asti Spumante instead of Screaming Eagle, although the people at Screaming Eagle might certainly object.

But what about less benign forms of implanting memories? What if certain people (e.g., an estranged relative), or certain classes of people (e.g., people of a different race), were inserted or excised in photos from the happiest days of your life? Wouldn't you begin to associate the people with the event, and feel more or less comfortable around those people? For you, and for all the people who keep track of you via social networks, these amended photos will become part of your narrative; your memories of yourself, and their memories of you.

Raskin says that "your past actions are the best predictor of your future decisions." Well, OK. But you know who else says that? The Los Angeles Police Department.

With shades of Minority Report's Pre-Crime Unit, the LAPD has instituted "predictive policing," and has a statistical unit devoted to number crunching crime stats to predict where crimes will occur in the future. For now, they seem confined to data on actual criminals and past crimes, but Facebook has famously contributed to the capture of some dumb criminals who updated their status and location, so it is only a matter of time until predictive policing figures out how to sort the complete social network feed.

And with the manipulability of social networking data, that could be a real problem. Photoshopping a rap star into party photos might give the party a higher coolness factor, which might help to sell the products placed in the photos; next week, when the rap star is arrested, everyone at the party has moved farther along the spectrum toward criminal associations and criminal behavior in the eyes of the law.

The genie is out of the bottle. Our social networking, our web searches, everything we do in the digital world creates a record that can be purchased or altered. Perhaps one way to relax the incentive for third parties to monetize our electronic autobiographies is to start paying for internet content we are accustomed to receiving for free.

Facebook isn't a charity, they aren't giving it away, not really. Social networking, games, news and information (and, yes, Google blogs), all of those sites cost money. We may have saved money by canceling that newspaper subscription and reading the paper for "free" online, but the costs in privacy and control can be staggering.

Free range chicken broth

For the Ethical Diner, we offer Free Range Chicken Broth.

Our chickens are never put in cages, they are allowed to roam free across meadow and pasture, grassland and vineyard, enjoying the blue sky and warm sunlight on their feathers.

They are happy, blissful birds, right up until the moment we chop off their heads and throw their lifeless bodies in the pot to make another batch of our delicious Free Range Chicken Broth.

Bon appetit.

Congressional election time capsule

Any time capsule of the 2010 Congressional election *must* contain a copy of the campaign ad above, from West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin's race for the Senate seat previously occupied by the late Senator Robert Byrd.

Manchin promises to repeal "the bad parts" of Obamacare, cut taxes, and get government off West Virginians' backs. He boasts of having sued the EPA, and uses the Cap and Trade bill for target practice.

Joe Manchin is a Democrat, and he's running away from his party as fast as he can.

Winning elections isn't rocket science

If you are a Congressman from Arizona and you're up for re-election, and your state is sagging under the burden of record unemployment and the implosion of the housing market, you wouldn't dream of calling for an economic boycott of your own state. Seriously, it would be political suicide, right?

Welcome to Arizona's 7th Congressional District, currently represented by Democrat Raul Grijalva. In response to the passage of Arizona's immigration bill, Congressman Grijalva called for a boycott of his own constituents, which may explain why Republican challenger Ruth McClung (an actual rocket scientist, BTW) is reportedly in a statistical dead heat with Grijalva.

Tip of the fedora to The Other McCain, who has a great post about the surprising new poll out of Arizona and its implications for Congressional races around the country. AZ-7 was widely considered to be a true blue district, and it's nothing short of shattering for Ruth McClung, an underfunded outsider, to have pulled within striking distance of the Democrat incumbent.

It's not too late to make them fight for every seat. Please visit Ruth McClung's website and donate what you can.

Rule 5 Sundays: Bone sucking is romantical

"Bone sucking is very romantical."

This video is hilarious and disturbing, and the audio is NSFW.

Rule 5 Sundays: Russell Crowe

Because it can't be easy to look this manly in a skirt.

Obama vetoes the recovery

This week, the Obama administration took two steps designed to bring the housing foreclosure process to a grinding halt. In doing so, he has delayed the recovery of the housing market and the economy as a whole, although he has bought a few votes from community organizer types and from delinquent borrowers who will be able to stay in their homes for free.

First, Obama vetoed the Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act, which would require state and local jurisdictions to accept signatures notarized out of state and online in certain circumstances. The banks want this law because, increasingly, banking (especially mortgage banking) is an interstate affair. If you've got a mortgage with a big bank, they are probably managing your mortgage from out of state; the Act would allow lenders to have their foreclosure documents notarized electronically or in whatever state their employees sign the documents, rather than requiring signatures and notarization in the delinquent borrower's jurisdiction.

Second, Freddie Mac, the government-run mortgage financing giant, is pressuring lenders to stop the foreclosure process altogether and search for problems with the foreclosure documentation process, specifically the use of "robo-signers." So far, Bank of America has caved, and many other lenders are delaying the foreclosure process in some parts of the country.

The so-called robo-signers are individuals at lenders or mortgage servicing firms who sign affidavits in support of the foreclosure, claiming personal knowledge of the legitimacy of the documentation. Unfortunately, many of these robo-signers are signing the affidavits based on file reviews performed by other personnel, without actually reviewing the documentation themselves; the name "robo-signers" caught on because of the inhuman volume of affidavits these people are signing, sometimes thousands or tens of thousands every month.

A process where employees feel obligated or empowered to falsify their personal knowledge of foreclosure documentation is a bad process, and should be fixed. But it's still just a paperwork problem; even if the wrong signature is on the affidavit, that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the substance of the foreclosure.

These efforts aren't designed to prevent fraudulent foreclosures, those exceedingly rare instances where, through malice or mistake, a lender forecloses on a house when the owner is current on payments. By focusing on the jurisdiction of the signature or the identity of the signer, these efforts are intended to prevent legitimate foreclosures with arguments about process.

This whole kerfuffle reminds me of the legal precedent that has developed around Fourth Amendment search and seizure cases. While we can all agree on the importance of the Bill of Rights and our freedom from government intrusion, there's something broken when a court rules that a lifeless body in the trunk of a car is inadmissible at a murder trial because the cop failed to follow the correct process when pulling over and questioning the suspect.

What are the consequences? Borrowers who are delinquent in their payments will be able to stay in their houses for free until the banks can resume the foreclosure process. As we've seen from the well-intentioned but wildly unsuccessful federal efforts to assist borrowers in distress, the overwhelming majority of these borrowers will be unable to afford to keep their homes, and the homes ultimately need to go back on the market through a short sale or a foreclosure so they can be bought by owners who can afford them. By keeping delinquent borrowers in homes they cannot afford, the Obama administration is only delaying the day of reckoning, and delaying the opportunity to bottom out the housing market by clearing the backlog of foreclosures so the market can find its equilibrium again.

Furthermore, if foreclosing on a home becomes more expensive for banks, what else becomes more expensive? That's right, buying a home becomes more expensive. The risk of foreclosure delay and expense will be passed along to consumers in the form of higher mortgage interest rates and tighter qualification guidelines.

This week, the Obama administration stalled the economy in an attempt to buy a few votes. November cannot come soon enough.

Cross-posted at Right Klik

Ten Buck Fridays: Joel Demos!

Don't forget: it's for the kids. If we are irresponsible now, our kids and grandkids will be forced to shoulder the bill.

This week's winner of the small-d democratic moneybomb is Joel Demos, who is running against Keith Ellison in Minnesota's 5th Congressional District. Please visit Joel's website and donate what you can to this worthy candidate, and don't forget to mention Ten Buck Fridays in the online donation form; the occupation section provides a handy spot, or under "special instructions to seller" if you are using PayPal.

Watch your wallet: here comes the AMT

Remember how Obama promised that he wouldn't raise income taxes on anyone who earned under $250,000?

Well, add that to the list of Obama's broken promises, because here comes the AMT.

The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) was designed to prevent wealthy households from using deductions and exemptions to completely zero out their federal income tax liability. When it took effect in 1970, it applied to 155 households. But the tax wasn't indexed for inflation, so each year it ensnares more and more taxpayers. Congress regularly passess "AMT patches" to slow its growth, but it continues to grow.

In 2009, 4 million families were affected by the AMT.

Congress has not passed an AMT patch this year, and according to the Congressional Budget Office, 27 million families are going to be affected when they file their taxes for tax year 2010. That's 1 in 6 taxpayers, including 36% of all married couples, and virtually every married taxpayer earning between $100,000 and $150,000.

This additional tax burden is completely independent of, and on top of, the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. Unless Congress passes a patch quickly, American families are in for a devastating tax season.

Speech is fire

Ancient Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization. The giant human-headed bulls of Nineveh; the Epic of Gilgamesh, perhaps humanity's first work of literature, painstakingly written by pressing a stylus into wet clay. A shadow fell across this great civilization, and we are left to encounter it as silent exhibits in a museum. But Ancient Mesopotamia is silent no more!

Now, thanks to some big swinging intellectual curiosity and linguistic sleuthing at the University of Cambridge, you can hear ancient Mesopotamian poetry and literature, spoken in the original Akkadian, as if you were hearing the works fresh off the author's pen (or damp clay tablet.)

Visit the website Speech is Fire for additional information on how they figured out what the spoken language probably sounded like, and to sample the recordings. I am particularly fond of Ishtar's Descent into the Netherword:

Where dust is their sustenance, and clay their food.

They see no light and dwell in darkness,

they are clothed like birds in wings for garments,

and dust has gathered on the door and the bolt.

Cue the recording, turn off the lights, look up at the stars, and let the ancients breathe their poetry to you across three thousand years.

Fruit-caused disaster

While the Department of Homeland Security is advising American travelers to be on the lookout for man-caused disasters in Europe, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suing the makers of Pom Wonderful pomegranate juice for fruit-caused disasters in your kitchen.

According to the FTC, POM's studies are too small to back up its claims that the juice can improve heart health and prostate health and alleviate erectile dysfunction. David Vladek, the FTC's top consumer protection official, says:

"Any consumer who sees POM Wonderful products as a silver bullet against disease has been misled."

OK, some of POM's ads are a bit colorful, like the one above. And POM did make some remarkably specific claims in its ads, claiming for example: a 30% decrease in arterial plaque; a 17% increase in blood flow; and that POM is 40% as effective as Viagra, although when it comes to the latter I'm pretty sure that 40% is not adequate.

Over the last 10 years, Americans have become 57% more likely to believe claims accompanied by numerical statistics, so we should all be on the alert for communications which will cause people to fruitlessly go off their meds. But most of POM's advertising is imagery; hyperbole, humor, memorable (and therefore profitable) precisely because it is extreme.

If the FTC is concerned with deceptive advertising, they shouldn't stop with POM Wonderful. If the FTC is serious about protecting American consumers, the FTC will soon be issuing statements concerning the following ads:

"Any consumer who thinks they'll look like this after a cut at Supercuts has been misled."

"Any consumer who equates driving a pre-owned BMW with taking a spin with a pre-owned blonde has been misled. No one has ever paid 18 years of child support to a BMW."

"Any consumer who thinks their fragrance will make the world forgive them for a tragic choice of footwear has been misled."

With the FTC's vigilance, fragrance ads will proclaim "It smells better than you do," BMW will proudly claim that their vehicles "Get you to your office warm and dry while making some Germans happy," and all Supercuts will be able to say is "People will still be able to distinguish you from the bald guy."

We'll all be protected from deception, and bored out of our minds.

Ten Buck Fridays: a very special poll

There's a very special Ten Buck Fridays poll this week.

The poll is a little different; the nominees are all candidates who have won prior Ten Buck Fridays polls. They've all become more competitive, and they all deserve our support. Vote for your favorite, and the winner will be announced on Friday morning.

Please visit Right Klik for additional information on the candidates.

As with all Ten Buck Fridays polls, everyone is encouraged to contact the winner's campaign and donate what they can.

Sister Wives

Have you seen the new series on TLC, Sister Wives? It's about fundamentalist Mormon Kody Brown and his four wives, thirteen children, and three stepchildren.

Apparently they hoped that the series would help encourage some beneficial conversation on the topic of plural marriages. Unfortunately, the state of Utah is considering charging Kody Brown with felony bigamy; although Brown is only legally married to his first wife, Utah bigamy law extends to cohabitation.

Here's my question. Back in August, Federal Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California's gay marriage ban by finding that "moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians."

If moral disapproval is not sufficient to prevent the expansion of the definition of marriage from one man/one woman to two men or two women, is moral disapproval sufficient to prevent the expansion of the definition of marriage from one man/one woman to one man/one woman/one more woman/one more woman? Why or why not?

Tony Strickland for California State Controller

Republican State Senator Tony Strickland is running against incumbent Democrat John Chiang for the office of California Controller. The State Controller is a state's Chief Financial Officer, in charge of the state's accounting and financial controls. By monitoring where the money goes, a Controller is in a unique position to identify waste and abuse in government spending.

For an example of what happens when a state does not have a competent Controller, look no further than Bell, California.

Bell is a small city in Los Angeles County with a population of ~40,000 (90% of whom are Latino), an average annual household income of $30,000, and an unemployment rate of 16%. Other than a brush with fame in 2000, when 55 Oscar statues were stolen off a trucking company loading dock in Bell, and thousands of missing Oscar ballots were discovered in a Bell post office, few people had ever heard of Bell before the Los Angeles Times blew the lid off of the obscene compensation structure for Bell city employees and elected officials. Bell's Chief Administrative Officer, Richard Rizzo, made an astonishing $1.5 million in salary and benefits last year; he and seven of his colleagues are in currently in trouble with the Attorney General, the Los Angeles District Attorney, and the FBI, for offenses including misappropriation of public funds, conflict of interest, and falsification of documents.

The scandal has inspired a closer examination of local government compensation across California. John Chiang, the incumbent Controller, responded to the scandal by requiring California cities to post salary information for officials and employees on the State Controller's Office website, as if transparency is a sufficient cure for corruption. Transparency certainly makes it possible for private citizens to detect malfeasance on the part of their elected officials, but it also puts private citizens in the position of having to become researchers and investigative reporters in order to ensure good government.

If John Chiang, the California Controller, had been doing his job, we wouldn't have needed the Los Angeles Times to reveal the corruption at the heart of Bell, and Californians wouldn't need to sift through data dumps on a government websites in our spare time in an attempt to ferret out government waste. John Chiang's boast of transparency is really a cynical act of delegation; here's all the information I should be looking at, if you think you can do a better job, have at it.

Meanwhile John Chiang knew or should have known about the outsized compensation structure in Bell, because the California Pension and Retirement System (CalPERS) knew about Bell's salary structure in 2006, and the Controller sits on the CalPERS board.

John Chiang has also stood in the way of Governor Schwarzenegger's attempts to use every tool available to him to ensure that California's budget is on time. Through a quirk in California law, if the California budget is late, the Governor has the authority to pay state employees federal minimum wage until the budget is signed. California has 240,000 active state employees, and the loss of pay would doubtless be disruptive if not devastating, but the threat of minimum wage also gives the Governor a very big stick.

Although the courts have affirmed that the Governor wields this stick, year after year the Controller has refused to implement the Governor's orders, claiming that his payroll systems are too antiquated. By putting the interests of California state employees before the interests of California as a whole, John Chiang has become a hero to the state employee unions and a recipient of generous union campaign contributions.

Meg Whitman is running for Governor, and promises to streamline state government if she is elected. She'll need a good Controller to help her accomplish that, but John Chiang has proven himself beholden to the public employee unions.

Real reform is impossible if John Chiang remains Controller, we need Tony Strickland. As CEO of EBay, Meg Whitman learned the value of a good Chief Financial Officer, which is why she tapped Strickland to run for Controller. In the State assembly, and now in the State Senate, Tony Strickland has compiled an honorable track record of pro-growth, pro-business policies that facilitate job creation and boost the economy without raising taxes. Tony Strickland recognizes that wasteful state spending is a dead weight on the economy, and will use the powers of the State Controller's Office to protect Californians by rightsizing state government.

Tony Strickland for California Controller.

All politics is local

As we stiffen our spines and empty our wallets in the final push toward taking back the United States Congress, I'd like to request that we all please pay attention to our state and local elections as well.

Depriving Obama, Pelosi, and Reid of their majorities will make us better off, but our state and local elected officials still have the capacity to make our lives miserable no matter who is in charge in D.C.

District Attorneys can make or break local crime-fighting efforts. An ideologue in the office can decide not to prosecute specific cases or types of cases, and can decline to pursue the death penalty even in states that allow the death penalty. And if your state elects judges, don't forget the peril of having an ideologue on the bench who feels entitled to interpret the law to provide whatever end result s/he wants.

The Controller (sometimes spelled Comptroller) is the state equivalent of a Chief Financial Officer. A Governor who sweeps into office promising top to bottom reform of state government but who doesn't have a good Controller at the helm will be significantly compromised in their ability to audit the state's books. (Meg Whitman call your office.)

State and local elected officials can raise our income and property taxes, annex private land, make our streets less safe, implement job-killing environmental policies, and engage in countless other acts of mischief.

All politics is local.

Ten Buck Fridays: Dale Glading!

The winner in this week's Ten Buck Fridays poll, with 54% of 1375 votes cast, is Dale Glading, who is running against Rob Andrews in New Jersey's 1st Congressional District.

Rob Andrews won the seat in 1990 after Jim Florio stepped down to become Governor, and Dale Glading is most effective competition Andrews has ever faced. New Jersey residents have had their pockets picked by extraordinary state and local tax increases, and as a result New Jersey voters are open to Republican and conservative candidates more than ever (Chris Christie call your office.)

Dale Glading is the founder and executive director of Saints Prison Ministry, which seeks to reform inmates in body and soul and turn them into productive members of society. Here are a few blurbs from Dale Glading on the issues:

Slash Government Spending and Force Congress to Live Within its Means

I believe that one of the most immoral things that the federal government has ever done is to saddle future generations of Americans with mountains of debt. Our children and grandchildren didn't incur this debt and yet, they will spend their lifetimes trying to repay it.

Presently, every American man, woman and child owes $40,000 of federal debt...and when you factor in unfunded liabilities, that number jumps to an astronomical $175,000 per person. In 2009, the interest alone on the federal debt was a record $800 billion!

Today, the United States owes Communist China almost $1 trillion dollars - a dangerously high amount that not only jeopardizes our financial well-being as a country, but also puts our national security at serious risk. Many analysts are predicting that our current AAA bond rating will soon be downgraded, bringing about higher interest rates and hyper-inflation.

It is time that the career politicians in Washington stopped trying to buy votes with taxpayers' money and learned to live within their means instead. That is why I support Rep. Mike Pence's proposed Balanced Budget Amendment that limits government spending to 20% of the GDP. I have also endorsed Rep. Todd Tiahrt's bill to place a moratorium on all federal earmarks.

Reduce Taxes for All Americans

Presidents like John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and even Bill Clinton all understood one fundamental financial principle: the key to economic expansion is lower taxes. That's why all three of these men pushed through tax cuts for all Americans. The result was that during President Reagan's eight years in office, revenues to the federal government more than doubled because companies had more money to invest and hire more workers, and average Americans had more money in their pockets to spend as they saw fit.

As a candidate, I have signed the "Taxpayers' Protection Pledge" promoted by Americans for Tax Reform as well as the American Family Business Institute's "Death Tax Repeal Pledge".

Defend and Restore Traditional Family Values

Unlike some Washington bureaucrats and revisionist historians, I believe that America was founded on solid Judeo-Christian principles. Likewise, our Founding Fathers understood that our unalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness were endowed by God alone.

For these reasons, I believe strongly in the Sanctity of Life and the Sanctity of Marriage.

I am also a strong advocate for the nation of Israel and its right to defend itself.

Please visit Dale Glading's website and donate what you can. November will be here before we know it, but we can't get cocky.