Duh.

Is over. California is broke. Like, really broke. Like one year, $24 billion deficit broke:

To balance the books, Schwarzenegger is eyeing the dismantling of the state’s CalWorks program, which serves more than 500,000 poor families with children, as well as the elimination of Healthy Families, which provides medical coverage to 928,000 children and teens. Mothballing the two programs would save the state about $1.4 billion in the coming fiscal year, officials said.

If the proposals to slash the safety net come to pass, they would completely reshape the state’s social service network, transforming California from one of the country’s most generous states to one of the most tightfisted in aiding the poor.

Also potentially on the chopping block is CalGrants, a financial assistance program that offers cash grants to lower- and middle-income college students each year. The governor’s proposal would eliminate the 77,000 new grants awarded each year at a cost of $180 million, but that saving would eventually grow to more than $900 million as students graduated and the program was phased out.

It’s sad that not everybody’s dreams can come true through state assistance, but it points to the major flaw in liberal thinking: it is unaffordable and unsustainable. Hopefully Obama will take this into consideration.

A report mentions:

As on many issues, the difference in opinion between the Political Class and the rest of the nation is larger than the gap between the political parties. By an 84% to seven percent (7%) margin, the Political Class prefers federal subsidies over bankruptcy. By a 67% to 21% margin, those in the Political Class favor federal loan guarantees to help California raise money (see more on the Political Class).

Voters have consistently opposed federal bailout funds for the auto industry, the banking industry and insurance companies. Looking back on the bailouts that were provided, most continue to believe they were a bad idea.

Where is the rapid ready accountability of politicians ignoring the will of the people? Still waiting for this accountability be placed on politicians.

Carol Rove wisely observes:

Barack Obama inherited a set of national-security policies that he rejected during the campaign but now embraces as president. This is a stunning and welcome about-face.

For example, President Obama kept George W. Bush’s military tribunals for terror detainees after calling them an “enormous failure” and a “legal black hole.” His campaign claimed last summer that “court systems . . . are capable of convicting terrorists.” Upon entering office, he found out they aren’t.

He insisted in an interview with NBC in 2007 that Congress mandate “consequences” for “a failure to meet various benchmarks and milestones” on aid to Iraq. Earlier this month he fought off legislatively mandated benchmarks in the $97 billion funding bill for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama agreed on April 23 to American Civil Liberties Union demands to release investigative photos of detainee abuse. Now’s he reversed himself. Pentagon officials apparently convinced him that releasing the photos would increase the risk to U.S. troops and civilian personnel.

Throughout his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama excoriated Mr. Bush’s counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, insisting it could not succeed. Earlier this year, facing increasing violence in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama rejected warnings of a “quagmire” and ordered more troops to that country. He isn’t calling it a “surge” but that’s what it is. He is applying in Afghanistan the counterinsurgency strategy Mr. Bush used in Iraq.

As a candidate, Mr. Obama promised to end the Iraq war by withdrawing all troops by March 2009. As president, he set a slower pace of drawdown. He has also said he will leave as many as 50,000 Americans troops there.

These reversals are both praiseworthy and evidence that, when it comes to national security, being briefed on terror threats as president is a lot different than placating MoveOn.org and Code Pink activists as a candidate. The realities of governing trump the realities of campaigning.

Thanks for voting for him! Obama has done a fine job of following most of the Bush policies I supported. Of course his economic policy has been laughably bad but still, 1 out of 2 ain’t that bad when you are dealing with someone as partisan left as Obama.

Congress is screwing with the market again:

Credit cards have long been a very good deal for people who pay their bills on time and in full. Even as card companies imposed punitive fees and penalties on those late with their payments, the best customers racked up cash-back rewards, frequent-flier miles and other perks in recent years.

Now Congress is moving to limit the penalties on riskier borrowers, who have become a prime source of billions of dollars in fee revenue for the industry. And to make up for lost income, the card companies are going after those people with sterling credit.

Banks are expected to look at reviving annual fees, curtailing cash-back and other rewards programs and charging interest immediately on a purchase instead of allowing a grace period of weeks, according to bank officials and trade groups.

Well goddammit. Thank you Congress, for once again helping deadbeats who don’t want to pay their bills at the expense of responsible consumers like me.

I have no sympathy for people in credit card debt. They knew what they were signing up for. Yours truly was once in a bit of credit card debt, but you know what I did? I stopped spending money and got another job. I paid off my debt within a few months, and I didn’t need Congress’s help to do it.

Now, as a person who pays his credit card bill in full every month, I will soon be penalized so that less responsible people can have lower penalties and interest rates, i.e. less incentive to act responsibly. Will someone please explain to me how this makes any sense at all?

If this goes as predicted, I and many others will likely close my credit card accounts, and the only people who will have credit cards will be those who can’t pay them back.

Unlike Democrats and Republicans I love liberty. In other words, I’m a libertarian.

Were going for a ride.

Obama is starting to realize that healthcare entitlements are a massive burden on the budget.

So what exactly is the president proposing to help him realize hundreds of billions of dollars a year in savings?

Obama aides talk about “game-changers.” These include improving health information technology, expanding wellness programs, expanding preventive medicine, changing reimbursement policies so hospitals are penalized for poor outcomes and instituting comparative effectiveness measures.

Nearly everybody believes these are good ideas. The first problem is that most experts, with a notable exception of David Cutler of Harvard, don’t believe they will produce much in the way of cost savings over the next 10 years. They are expensive to set up and even if they work, it would take a long time for cumulative efficiencies to have much effect. That means that from today until the time President Obama is, say, 60, the U.S. will get no fiscal relief.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like Obama’s plan to save money is to spend more money.

Currently, the health care industry has no incentive to reduce costs. Why? Because the people that would drive cheaper medical innovations are covered by Medicare/Medicaid. If Medicare/Medicaid stopped paying for these people, the health industry would stop making money from these people until it developed cheaper treatments.

In our system right now, there is no incentive to develop more affordable treatment, because the current more expensive treatments are payed for by the tax payer. This has ruined the demand curve, which is an integral part of a functioning market.

So I have an idea: cut off Medicare/Medicaid tomorrow. Pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, pharmacies, etc. would start cutting costs immediately, while beginning development on cheaper treatments to serve the 45 million strong uninsured market. Until we allow the incentive of the almighty dollar to work, we will not see affordable medical care.

I know some people might see this plan as callous. And yes, some people will be left out in the cold. But do you want low cost health care, or do you want high cost, over-budget government insurance? Because you can’t have it both ways Barack.

The NIH just funded a new $2.6 million grant for a study in China to look at drunk prostitutes:

Researchers will visit 100 houses of ill repute — a whole hamlet of harlots — to collect data on 700 prostitutes and 150 pimps and madams, referred to as “gatekeepers” in the study’s sterile abstract.

Phase one of the study is intended to research “alcohol use/abuse and related sexual risk among FSWs in China,” according to the abstract — a cold hard look at why prostitutes engage in dangerous sex while drunk.

Now I’m all for drinking and sex, but is this study really worth it? Fox News doesn’t seem to think so. I know many people who read this site work in research, so what do you guys think? Does this kind of research contribute to the “greater good?”

Fans of redistribution seem to forget freedom’s essential need for property rights:

The founders’ study of history taught them that majority rule was susceptible to tyranny and that the protection of property rights was an indispensable condition for the preservation of freedom and for the growth of national wealth. The founders observed that tyrannical rule and material scarcity had by and large been the fate of man through the ages. They saw the confiscation of property by government in the name of the sovereign power of the state as an old and sorry story. Through the protection of property rights they meant to forge a new order of the ages. It lies to us to regain their understanding and act on it.

Capitalism is all about protecting a person’s property rights. In other words, capitalism is essential to a freely functioning democracy. This basic principle is lost on our current administration. Whose headed by a president many of you supported.