Redstate

Posted at 4:24pm on Jul. 8, 2008 Record Complicates Obama's "Shift" To Center

By California Yankee

UPDATED

After running a primary campaign from the far left, Obama is now trying to shift right toward the center.

Obama is impeded in this shift by his extreme left wing positions and the voting record that earned him the tittle of the most liberal senator in 2007.

According to Bloomberg:

In recent weeks, Obama said he supports gun-ownership rights, backs legislation giving immunity to telephone companies that participated in an anti-terrorism surveillance program and would consider cutting corporate taxes. On July 3, he said he would ``continue to refine my policies'' on the Iraq War.

Obama built his candidacy on the support of his party's liberal base, which favors restrictions on guns and wiretapping, raising taxes for companies, and pulling U.S. forces from Iraq. As an Illinois state legislator, he voted against a law carving out self-defense exceptions to local handgun bans; as a U.S. senator, he opposed business tax cuts and extending warrantless eavesdropping, and backed tougher gun laws. On Iraq, he has long focused on ending the war and withdrawing troops.

Obama denies that he trying to shift his extreme left wing positions toward the center:

"I get tagged as being on the left and when I simply describe what have been my positions consistently, then suddenly people act surprised," Obama told reporters in Ohio on July 1. There haven't "been substantial shifts," he said.

Read on, there is more.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Budget | Center | Shift | taxes — Comments (9)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:09am on Jun. 29, 2008 MI Morning Update: MRP-RNC GOTV Training Big Success - MI Budget Balance: Still No Reforms - MI Budget Grows...Again!

By saul anuzis

128 Days until Election Day

June 29, 2008

MORNING UPDATE:

MRP-RNC VOTER VAULT TRAINING...was a great success as over 50 activists gathered to see the latest Voter Vault has to offer. This was the first of two training sessions, MRP-RNC GOTV/Votervault training.   With the RNC's, help we were able to help prepare our grassroots activists and local candidates for the campaign ahead. Special thanks to Paul Viar and Stephanie Pazdro for helping us make this event a success.    

Posted in Budget | GOTV | Michigan Republican Party | Republicans | RNC | Saul Anuzis — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:23am on Jun. 24, 2008 MI Morning Update: MI Budget in Deficit...AGAIN! - Obama Policies Risky - Max M. Fisher Dinner Wednesday

By saul anuzis

133 Days until Election Day

June 24, 2008

MORNING UPDATE:

GRANHOLM-DEMOCRATS DEFICIT...AGAIN...State leaders have agreed that the size of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2009 budget is $397 million -- $215 million General Fund and $182 million School Aid Fund.  We need REFORMS now!!!

Posted in Barack Obama | Budget | Deficit | Max Fisher | Michigan Republican Party | Republicans | Saul Anuzis — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 6:58pm on Jan. 31, 2008 Bush The Spending Hawk

Starting The Bidding Low

By Dan McLaughlin

This AP report suggests that President Bush may be submitting his most frugal budget yet, in his final year in office:

President George W. Bush's 2009 budget will virtually freeze most domestic programs and seek nearly $200 billion in savings from federal health care programs, a senior administration official said Thursday.

Given that this is an election-year budget submitted by a lame duck president to a hostile Congress, don't hold your breath waiting for this to get enacted. But for once, the Bush White House may be taking steps to draw an election-year contrast on spending, and just as a candidate who has sought to brand himself as a spending hawk seems poised to take the party's nomination. Maybe some parts of the GOP's domestic-policy brand can be salvaged yet. How does Bush propose to save that money?

Read On...

Posted in Better Late Than Never | Budget | President Bush | The White House — Comments (17)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 9:12am on Jan. 30, 2008 One Time Fixes: Oh, so THAT'S how we're going to pay for it...

By RightMichigan.com

Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.

24 expansions of government and only 4 limitations.  If you want to call them that.  When you boil it all down last night the Mackinac Center reports that we heard Jennifer Granholm propose twenty-four expansions of government and only four limitations.  Ant those... They were things like "achieve significant savings in our Corrections Department by adopting changes that save money."  She claims that at the end of the day these four limitations will represent $200 million in savings.  Which covers two-thirds the cost of one of the twenty-four expansions of government, the new Bob Thompson-esque charter schools.

Posted in Breaking News | Budget | Democrats | jennifer granholm | Michigan | tax hike — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:28am on Jan. 11, 2008 The Girly Man Strikes

By Neil Stevens

It's official: Governor Schwarzenegger wants to release 22,000 prison inmates early in order to try to balance the budget more easily. He's now the Girly Man on crime. It's a good thing he can't run for President, because this is surely going to be a Willie Horton moment for him. Out of those 22,000 supposedly low-risk criminals, surely at least one is going to defy that classification.

Posted at 3:06am on Jan. 8, 2008 I Love California Republicans

Too bad the Governor Isn't One

By Neil Stevens

California Governor Schwarzenegger is dealing with a self-made budget crisis (I told you so, and so did Assembly Republicans), as Gray Davis-level spending increases have led to a budget deficit just as large as the one Gray Davis left behind. He's planning to deal with it by calling an emergency, which can force the legislature to pass a bill to re-balance the budget. He's formally calling for spending cuts, but the Democrats want to raise taxes.

So guess what? Sacramento Republicans are signing a no-tax pledge, says the San Diego Union-Tribune and Republican votes would be needed for any Democrat-led tax plan. And we know they're going to try for a tax hike.

Read On...

Posted in Arnold Schwarzenegger | Budget | California | Deficit | State Politics | taxes — Comments (14)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 9:35am on Jan. 7, 2008 MI Governor hits a new low: Granholm playing political games with Human Services

By RightMichigan.com

Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.

Some interesting details began to emerge over the weekend regarding the sudden three-hundred-plus million dollar budget surplus the State miraculously discovered after closing the books on 2007.  When all was said and done there was about $350 million sitting in the bank that the good folks in Lansing hadn't expected to be there and before they got a chance to figure out the where and the how and the what-now a creeping, insidious spin started to permeate the press almost instantly.

While people like House Minority Leader Craig DeRoche suggested immediately that something was amiss the administration began talking to the press and "reminding" them that with projected deficits facing the State in 2008 this money was almost like a Christmas miracle.  They shouldn't question it, they should just note that this will help balance the books in the coming year.  It's a subtle move.  Just don't address the "where" and the "how" and talk about the money in "conservative" terms.  Talk about how it will help avoid future tax increases.  Because no one likes tax hikes in an election year.

All of a sudden no one remembers to ask where it came from or what the appropriate response really is (did I hear someone say "refund").  Heck, some folks in the press even lose their minds and start printing flat out lies.  Take the big headline story from the Associated Press over the weekend:

Faced with a $1.75 billion shortfall, lawmakers and Granholm increased revenue by $1.3 billion by raising the state income tax on Oct. 1 and placing a surcharge on the new Michigan Business Tax that took effect Jan. 1. They also trimmed or restricted spending by more than $400 million.

Some House Republicans say the surplus shows the government wasn't as desperate for new revenue as it claimed during last year's budget negotiations.

"Normally finishing financially in the black is a job well done, but I can't look at it that way when the wallets of hardworking families of Michigan were just squeezed because the state said it needed more money or else," GOP Rep. Kevin Elsenheimer of Kewadin said in a release last week.

Representative Elsenheimer brings up a good point.  And the article is presenting the "conservative" angle, so what's the problem?  Where's the inaccuracy or the bias?  Go back to that first paragraph.  Not only was it a $1.4 billion tax hike complete with a $900 million compliance cost (making it a $2.3 billion tax hike on businesses) that's not the sentence that'll drive you crazy.  "They also trimmed or restricted spending by more than $400 million."

Patently false.  Unequivocally untrue.  The FY2007-2008 budget was the biggest budget in the history of the State of Michigan.  Spending increased over FY2006-2007.  There was no trimming.  There was only restricting if you go with the strictest definition of the word and assume that the fact they didn't spend a hundred billion dollars buying every Michigan child a pony represents some sort of fiscal restraint.  

But the article has done it's job.  It's muddied the waters.  It's protecting the entrenched Democrat big government interests in Lansing (as the MSM is want to do) and put on a nice coat of camouflage by talking to Republicans to make the piece look bipartisan.  And still the question remains... where exactly did this extra cash come from?

For the answers we'll go to this morning's lead editorial in the Detroit News:

Half the surplus in the General Fund is the result of unexpectedly strong revenues in the last couple of months of the budget year. The other half is the result of what are known as "lapses," or unspent appropriations that are returned to the treasury. Three-quarters of this amount came from the Departments of Health and Human Services as the result of reductions in their spending in the last quarter of the budget year, according to an analysis by the state Senate Fiscal Agency published late last month.

It should be remembered that these departments, along with the State Police, were embarrassed when it was revealed that they had overspent their appropriations for the 2006 fiscal year by about $50 million and state lawmakers were not informed until after the gubernatorial election.

Posted in Breaking News | Budget | Ethics | Granholm | Michigan | tax hike | taxes | www.RightMichigan.com — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Read More »