February 20th in History

1792 – The Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, is signed by President George Washington.
1872 – In New York City the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens.
1933 – The Congress of the United States proposes the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, which would end Prohibition in the United States.
1962 – While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn orbits the earth three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes, becoming the first American to orbit the earth.

California resolves budget standoff

This article can be found at CNN . From the article “The California Senate passed the state’s budget on Thursday morning after a marathon session, and the legislation received final approval from the state Assembly minutes later.” At least they finally got something done. But get this from the article “Sen. Abel Maldonado had been one Republican amenable to vote for the measure in exchange for various demands, and lawmakers worked to meet them to get his support. Senators voted for a measure to revise the state’s constitution to permit “open” primaries for legislative, congressional and gubernatorial elections. They also passed another, the removal of a 12-cent additional gas tax increase.” I have a problem with non budget things being in a budget bill. What doe open primaries have to do with a budget. If Mr. Maldonado wanted open primaries then he should have brought this up on something else other then a budget plan. These politicians have to stop sticking crap in bills and budgets that do no belong.

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February 19th in History

1674 – England and the Netherlands sign the Peace of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War. A provision of the agreement transfers the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England, and it is renamed New York.
1807 – In Alabama, Former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr is arrested for treason and confined to Fort Stoddert.
1846 – In Austin, Texas the newly-formed Texas state government is officially installed. The Republic of Texas government officially transfers power to the State of Texas government following Texas’ annexation by the United States.
1847 – The Donner Party is rescued.
1878 – The phonograph is patented by Thomas Edison.
1942 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the executive order 9066, allowing the United States military to relocate Japanese-Americans to Japanese internment camps.
1945 – Battle of Iwo Jima – about 30,000 United States Marines land on Iwo Jima.
1953 – Georgia approves the first literature censorship board in the United States.

California can’t solve budget crisis

This article can be found at CNN . Before I copy clips from the article like I usually do let me just say surprise surprise. From the article, “California lawmakers worked into early Wednesday but couldn’t pass a budget to avoid the possibility of laying off 10,000 more state workers.” This budget is way past due and this should never have happened. Get this from the article, “Late Tuesday, Republicans ousted their leader, Sen. Dave Cogdill of Modesto. The move was likely to complicate debate because Cogdill had headed up negotiations with Democrats on the budget impasse.” That’s the way to get something done, not only have they waited past the 11th hour to get something done they now have demoted the Republican stated senator that has been doing the negotiations on the budget. Why doesn’t California talk with the bank and auto CEOs and use they budget plans. It would be easy just go to the federal government. Though I will have to say that any state financial issues that can not be worked out should be a federal government priority over helping anyone else out. The scary part of this article is that it is titled that it is about California but only a 1/3 of the article is about California. The other 2/3 of the article is about other states that are having financial problems. Here is a list of states mentioned in the article with financial issues:

California
Kansas (which stated in the article that they just passed a budget)
Colorado
Washington
Hawaii
New York
Florida

For all you non math wizards that is 14% of the United States just in this article. I know there are other states that are having big problems. This is still not getting much media coverage but the state financial issues are far more severe then most people realize.

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Obama to unveil $75B mortgage relief plan

This article can be found at MSNBC written by the AP. From the article, “President Barack Obama marshaled $75 billion on Wednesday to tackle the foreclosure crisis in an effort to prevent up to 9 million Americans from losing their homes.” I’m glad that President Obama and his team are trying to come up with plans to fix the economy, housing included, but when is enough enough? How much money is the United States plan on borrowing or printing, both equally bad, to fix this mess? When do we hit the time and say that we have done all we can do and let the chips fall where they may. To fix all these issues that are going on are we not going to make a bigger mess in the future? Also, the above statement that I copied out of the article is misleading and is contradicted later on in the article as I am about to show.

From the article, “The plan is more ambitious than initially expected — and more expensive. It aims to aid borrowers who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are currently worth, and borrowers who are on the verge of foreclosure.” Here is the contradiction, the first part that I copied states “prevent up to 9 million Americans from losing their homes” the second part that I copied states “aid borrowers who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are currently worth”. When did it start to happen that when you owe more on your house then it is worth constitute that you are about to lose your house? If this is the new rule then everything that you buy on credit you are on the verge of getting reclaimed because you owe more then it is worth since the second you buy something it because worth less then purchased new, collectibles and antiques do not apply. I state this because when you are reading news articles you have to be careful and pay attention to what is written. Back to the point of this post, hopefully we are getting to the end of all these bail outs because unless the government has a money tree besides a printing press that I do not know about I fear we could be causing more future problems then fixing present problems.

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February 18th in History

1841 – The first ongoing filibuster in the United States Senate begins and lasts until March 11.
1861 – In Montgomery, Alabama, Jefferson Davis is inaugurated as the provisional President of the Confederate States of America.
1865 – Union forces under Major General William T. Sherman set the South Carolina State House on fire during the burning of Columbia.
1885 – Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published for the first time.
1972 – The California Supreme Court in the case of People v. Anderson, 6 Cal.3d 628 invalidates the state’s death penalty and commutes the sentences of all death row inmates to life in prison.

Births
1892 – Wendell Willkie, American politician (d. 1944)

Deaths
1845 – Johnny Appleseed, American environmentalist (b. 1774)

Kansas may delay tax refunds, paychecks

This article can be found at The Wichita Eagle written by Jeannine Koranda. From the article, “Income tax refunds and state employee paychecks could be late after Republican leaders and the Democratic governor clashed Monday over how to solve a cash-flow problem. Payments to Medicaid providers and schools also could be delayed.” Just like our national politicians the state level politicians can’t come together to get something done and a huge mess happens. How on Earth can something like this happen where a state in the United States can not afford to pay state employees or to pay out tax refunds.

Another part of the article, “Republican leaders said they had no choice, that by law the state can’t borrow any more money from itself. Sebelius and Democrats disagree and accuse the GOP of playing politics with people’s paychecks.” I wonder which party is going to start holding their breath and stamping their feet. These politicians can not see past party lines and act like a bunch of children by blaming each other instead of saying, we have a mess and we are going to clean it up. With my previous post about California and this post about Kansas I think we are going to start seeing a lot of news about states being in financial problems. My question is how is the federal government going to be able to bail out all these states along all the industries that it is bailing out?

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In Deepening Recession, California Begins Laying Off 20,000 State Employees

This article can be found at US News and World Report written by Amanda Ruggeri. The most telling part of this article is “California, the world’s-eighth largest economy, has a projected deficit of $41 billion through 2010. It’s been trying for months to come up with a budget that can close that gap, but to no avail. Currently stalled in the legislature, the budget is now 15 weeks overdue.” You can see the concern the California elected officials have by letting the budget get to 15 weeks overdue. To let a situation like this get so far out of control and then not show any motivation to get something done and let their budget get to be 15 weeks overdue is mind blowing. And what is the effect of the California elected officials not getting something done in a timely fashion, “With so much against the state—and unless legislators come up with a solution—the state controller has predicted that California will run out of cash by the end of the month.” So who do you think is going to rescue California? The tax payers in the other 49 states whose states are having financial issues of their own.

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Supreme Court case with the feel of a best seller

This article can be found at USA Today written by Joan Biskupic. From the article “The Supreme Court case of Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal began when Donald Blankenship, chairman and CEO of Massey, lost a $50 million verdict in a fraud lawsuit brought by Hugh Caperton and his small, independent Harman Mining Co. over the cancellation of a long-term coal contract. As the case moved toward appeals, Blankenship contributed $3 million to help unseat incumbent Democratic Judge Warren McGraw in his race against a Republican, Charleston lawyer Brent Benjamin — 60% of the total spent in favor of Benjamin and against McGraw. Benjamin won. Three years later, when Massey’s appeal got to the West Virginia Supreme Court, Benjamin cast a crucial vote to overturn the verdict that had favored Caperton.” This is shameful that this judge did not remove himself from this case. Here is the response from the judge, “Benjamin said the big money that helped get him elected did not go to him directly. It was sent to an independent campaign group that spent millions of dollars to unseat McGraw. In an opinion explaining why he did not pull out of the case, Benjamin said he had no personal relationship with the people involved and no financial stake in the outcome. (Last month, Benjamin announced he would not take part in any other cases involving Massey until the U.S. Supreme Court rules.)” I would have to question this judges ability to make judgements if this is his reasoning on why he did not remove himself from this case. He appears to be lacking in being able to make commonsense decisions.

Also from the article, “State judicial codes vary over when judges should remove themselves from cases. Many, such as West Virginia, let the judges decide.” I find this surprising. Isn’t this just leaving it up to corrupt officials to determine if they are too corrupt or not.

Hoyer to Pelosi: Stand up to Senate

This article can be found at Politico written by Patrick O’Connor & John Bresnahan. From the article “And in a private conversation with Pelosi, aides say Hoyer reminded the speaker that they’d talked previously about tolerating Senate strong-arming on the stimulus and on children’s health insurance — two Democratic priorities — but then holding their own on future legislation.” This is laughable. Someone needs to explain to Mr. Hoyer that this is how the two parts of the legislative branch is suppose to work. Also, Mr. Hoyer also appears to be trying to do the same thing that he is complaining that the Senate is doing, he wants to strong arm the Senate.

Another good part of the article, “Democrats complained repeatedly about this dynamic as negotiators finalized the stimulus package last week, stripping billions for state aid and school construction at the request of Specter, Snowe and Collins. One House Democrat, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said colleagues are “furious” about those changes.” Whoever is “furious” about the changes made had the opportunity to vote against the plan that the Senate sent over and if they did not vote against the plan then in my opinion they must not be that mad about what was taken out.

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