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Rick Perry doesn't support secession petition on White House website

"Gov. [Rick] Perry believes in the greatness of our Union and nothing should be done to change it," his press secretary Catherine Frazier wrote in a statement. "But he also shares the frustrations many Americans have with our federal government."//politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/13/rick-perry-doesnt-support-secession-petition-on-white-house-website/?hpt=hp_t2

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Some on the right are concerned that the petitions to secede, posted on a White House website by angry voters, are setting conservatives up as easy targets for the mockery of liberals.

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Whether these disgruntled folks are just conservatives venting about President Obama’s reelection, or whether they really believe they’d have a brighter future in the United State of Georgia, say, is an open question. But they’ve received a lot of media attention in recent days, to the point where some on the right are asking this question: Are these people just helping the left?

That’s because the whole thing goes beyond the appearance of sore losing and nears the outer rings of planet lunacy. It makes conservatives look unhinged and foolish, in this view, setting them up as easy targets for the mockery of liberals. Take Jon Stewart, who on his “Daily Show” Tuesday night said he now understands why so many Southerners still fly the Confederate flag.

“It’s like keeping your fat pants after you lose some weight. You’re happy for now with the new you, but ..." Mr. Stewart said in a segment titled in part “Whine Country.”

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

We would not be surprised if angry voters from all 50 states eventually start petitions since there are some irritated citizens everywhere, after all.

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Other conservatives have been blunter in their defense of the integrity of the nation that was kept together by Abraham Lincoln, a Republican. Over at the RedState blog, editor Erick Erickson – no softy, given that he wants to oust Speaker John Boehner in favor of Rep. Paul Ryan – scoffs at the whole effort.

“We here at RedState are American citizens. We have no plans to secede from the union. If you do, good luck with that, but this is not the place for you,” he wrote on Tuesday.

“Talk of secession is asinine, counter-productive, and distracting,” Charles C.W. Cooke of the National Review wrote.

One of the best pieces of evidence supporting Mr. Cooke’s above conclusion is that these petitions are still up. They’re on a White House website, remember. If the Obama administration thought this movement truly undermined the White House, don’t you think it’d find a reason to take them down?

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California's budget shows signs of a surplus, analyst says

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- The state's fiscal analyst said Wednesday that California's long-tattered budget is on the verge of producing surpluses. The improved outlook comes after voters approved two tax initiatives last week, and the California economy and housing market showed signs of perking up. State leaders have also cut programs in recent years.

It was the nonpartisan legislative analyst's most optimistic fiscal forecast since the dot-com boom 12 years ago. It shows a relatively small $1.9 billion deficit through June 2014 against a $97.7 billion general fund, followed by annual surpluses that grow beyond $9 billion in 2017-18.

"For the first time since about 2001, we actually show us being in the black," Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor said. "This is a dramatic turnaround."More at http://www.sacbee.com/2012/11/15/4987739/californias-budget-shows-sign
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Texas Governor Rick Perry treated guests to a barbecue lunch paid for by a wealthy businessman. Supporters of California Governor Jerry Brown munched on hot dogs at a union-sponsored picnic.

The stark contrast in inaugural menus last month highlights the different approaches the two most populous U.S. states are taking to deal with massive budget deficits.

Perry, a Republican, campaigned on the strength of the Texas economy and made political hay of the fact the Lone Star state had avoided California's massive deficit, pegged at $25.4 billion through the upcoming budget year.

Now Texas faces a budget deficit estimated as high as $27 billion for the upcoming two-year cycle of 2012-2013. To close the gap, state legislators have proposed steep cuts in funding to education and welfare programs.More at http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/04/us-usa-deficits-states-idUST
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Murdock is the former state demographer in Texas. This month, he testified in a trial in which hundreds of Texas school districts are suing the state for failing in its constitutional obligation to adequately fund its schools.

The suit was prompted by the $5.4 billion the Legislature cut from public school funding and education grant programs last year. If that level of funding continues, Murdock warned, businesses will go elsewhere in search of skilled workers. Texas’s average household income, now about $66,000 a year, could shrink by $7,700 by 2050 which, of course, could cost the state many more billions – in taxes and prison and welfare costs – than it’s saving now.

Murdock, echoing parts of a forecast he first issued in 2003, also pointed out that if Texas, like California, now a majority-minority state, educated its poor and non-Hispanic white students to the same level as its Anglos, average household income would increase by $16,000 by 2050. “How well minority populations do in Texas is how well Texas will do,” he told the court.

In his earlier forecast, published in his 2003 book, The New Texas Challenge, Murdock provided a lot of other data, which would be applicable here as well. If the state educated its poor and brown and black kids to the same level as its non-Hispanic whites, its prison costs would be 60 percent lower; Medicaid costs 65 percent lower.

Alternatively, without substantial improvement, “Texas would have a population that not only will be poorer, less well educated and more in need for numerous state services than its present population but also less able to support such services. It would have a population that is likely to be less competitive (in the international market).”More at http://www.edsource.org/today/2012/texas-california-do-compete-in-fund
ing-race-to-the-bottom/22158

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In the spring of 2011, a group of Californians led by Assemblyman Dan Logue, most of them Republicans but also including Lieut. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, flew to Austin on what Logue called “an economic fact-finding mission” to learn about what some of them called “the Texas Miracle.” They didn’t notice the price of the “miracle.”

Part of it was sheer politics, including, no doubt, a subtle nudge for Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential ambitions, but the talk was about other things: How Texas was creating jobs and snatching (enticing? stealing?) businesses from California and other states; about its friendly business climate.
Not much was said about its dismal state of health care, its high poverty rates, its miserable wage scales; its school funding; its pollution or a regressive tax structure under which the poor pay a larger share of their incomes than the rich. (The same is true in California, but not to the same degree.)

Nor has anyone taken much notice of the fact that for the past couple of years California has been creating jobs at a much higher rate than the nation as a whole, or that the link between “business climate” and unemployment rates is tenuous at best. Nevada, which has the nation’s third friendliest tax structure for business, according to the Tax Foundation, has the nation’s worst unemployment rate. Same

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Wildly unpopular Republican Ohio governor John Kasich has a proposal: to cut $8 billion from his state's 2011-2013 budget. Despite plenty of controversy since he unveiled the plan in March, both the Republican-controlled state House and Senate have passed versions of it.

While Kasich is indeed facing a gaping budget hole (though some say he's exaggerating its size), many argue that the reforms unfairly punish lower-income Ohioans. Let's break down who's carrying the bulk of the proposed budget's burdens:


State workers: Local governments are probably the biggest losers in Kasich's budget, losing 50 percent of their funding by the second year of the plan. And prison workers worry that the provision to sell off Ohio's prisons will lead to layoffs. Altogether, a report by think tank Innovation Ohio estimates, the budget will cause a loss of 51,000 state jobs.

People who enjoy learning and/or teaching stuff: Education loses 11.5 percent of its current funding in the Kasich budget. According to the Ohio Education Association, that would mean firing 10,000 teachers. Cleveland schools are already planning to lay off at least 500 educators. At the university level, the cuts average 13 percent. Ohio State, one of the largest universities in the nation, soon will be presenting its plan to account for the deficit to its board. Spokeswoman Shelly Hoffman says the budget-balancing measures include early retirements, not filling vacancies, and raising tuition for the second year in a row.

People who go to libraries or whose houses catch on fire: Mike Gillis, communications director of the AFL-CIO, says the union's concerns with the budget are "too long to list," but that problem number one is "definitely the massive loss of public sector jobs." Those cuts won't just affect state workers. Library funding, for example, will be cut 5 percent, on top of a 30 percent cut since 2000, while demand for services has grown 23 percent in the same period. And since a lot of Ohio cities spend much of their funds on public safety, cuts to local governments mean big hits to fire and police departments. Like in Circleville, where Mayor Chuck Taylor is fretting about how to maintain the town's infrastructure. "We're cut to the bone now," he told the Columbus Dispatch. "I don't know what we are going to do. It's going to be devastating to us, to be honest."

Women who need an abortion: In a bizarre move—in that it's not meant to save money—the Senate slipped limits to abortion access into its version of the bill last week. One provision bans unincorporated (read: mostly rural) counties from covering abortion in their employee insurance plans. Another bans publicly funded hospitals from performing the procedure. That affects "pretty much all the public hospitals in the state," says Ohio NARAL's Kellie Copeland. "Some of them are the top hospitals in the state, who have top OB-GYNs who specialize in high-risk pregnancies." Exceptions will be made in cases of rape, incest, or when a woman's life is in danger. Republican lawmakers say these measures will keep taxpayer dollars from going toward abortions. Copeland says they don't, since taxpayer dollars are legally banned from going toward abortions in Ohio; procedures at public hospitals already have to be paid with private funds.More at http://www.motherjones.com/rights-stuff/2011/06/who-getting-screwed-oh
io-budget-cuts

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