Ron Paul supporters get a lot of flak from traditional Republicans because of Paul’s foreign policy. In truth, it’s not the foreign policy I would choose if I were president, so I’m not going to give it a defense here. Instead, I want to lay out the argument why, even though I’ll disagree with his foreign policy, I still want to vote for him.

I am voting for Ron Paul because he is the only candidate who is serious about tackling our country’s massive fiscal problems. See below for proof.

The CATO Institute put together a fantastic summary of the Republican candidates likely spending positions for each department of the federal government. Ron Paul is the only one serious enough about shrinking the federal government to have produced his own federal budget. As you can see, he has laid out specific cuts to departments and programs. No other candidate is remotely close.

Is this level of seriousness worth letting Iran have a nuclear weapon? Is it worth letting China have free reign in the South China Sea? Is it worth leaving South Korea to its own defenses? I think so. The overseas changes that will occur will not threaten the survival of the United States. Maybe Israel and South Korea will get nuked. There will certainly be more wars and instability. Yet, I am willing to let the world burn to save America. Our debt can destroy this country. It’s the price I am willing to pay, to drastically cut the federal budget.

I don’t want to give Iowa’s caucus undue attention. After all, there never was a President Huckabee or Dole. Still though, those results splashed some cold water on my face. I detest the idea of Romney winning, but the very idea of Santorum as a front runner is madness. So who is the last ‘Not-Romney’ in the race?

Now I’m compelled to take a serious look at Jon Huntsman. I cannot believe I am though. At the start of the race, I swore I wouldn’t. How could I vote for someone who worked in the Obama administration?

To start with, there is this meme running around conservative blogs where people repeatedly change Huntsman’s first name. I’m guessing it’s a knock against his null name recognition, but I wish I could find confirmation on that somewhere. Whatever. It still tickles me.

So what has Cadwallader Huntsman done with himself? I’ll turn to Wikipedia for a life summary.

• Dropped out of high school to play keyboard in a band
• Got GED, went to the University of Utah
• Paused his college education to go on a Mormon mission in Taiwan
• Transferred to U. Penn and earned a bachelor’s in International Politics
• Staff assistant in the Reagan White House
• Deputy Assistant Commerce Secretary for trade development & commerce in East Asia under Bush I
• Ambassador to Singapore under Bush I
• Served as an executive in the family corporation
• Deputy Trade Representative under Bush II
• Elected as Utah Governor, twice
• Ambassador to China under Obama

All this is very impressive in bullet form. Yet, if you think about it, what does it really show? I worry this is a guy who didn’t have to work all that hard. Dropping out of high school to play in a band can be spun as a romantic, adventurous endeavor, but is it really all that risky for a billionaire’s son to do? Then once he graduates from college, his very first job is in the White House? There’s no way he got that on his own merits. Then once the Republicans are out of power, Eustace Huntsman goes to work for the family mega-corp. That’s hardly the hallmark of a self-made man. He certainly had a lot of help from his father. It makes me suspect he is lazy and uncreative. I can’t say for sure though. He did get these helpful career boosts but perhaps he went on to shine in these roles.

I think it’s best to judge him by his actions as governor. Even if the Huntsman name won the election for him, he still had to act on his own while in office. So what did he do there?

• BLS Current Population Survey rated Utah #1 in job growth during Huntsman’s governorship
• BLS Current Employment Statistics Survey rated Utah #4 in job creation during Huntsman’s governorship
• 37% increase in Utah state budget over Huntsman’s tenure
• Moved Utah to a flat 5% income tax system
• Cut sales tax rate by 0.1%
• Cut sales tax on prepared food from 4.7% to 1.75%
• Proposed eliminating Corporate Tax on businesses making under $5 million
• Raised DMV fees
• Proposed 400% increase in cigarette taxes
• Utah joined the Western Climate Initiative, a cap-and-trade greenhouse gas scheme
• Supported a minimum wage increase
• Supported school vouchers

This does not enthuse me. This feels like the behavior of a inoffensive, go-along-get-along Republican. These are the people putting us on the slow boat to socialism. It’s marvelous Calixtus Huntsman cut taxes, but he didn’t cut any spending along with it. Worse, he raised the state’s budget! This type of governance is ruining the United States of America. The federal government needs radical, frontier surgery. The budget needs someone who will take an axe and a bonesaw to it, not a dainty scalpel.

I don’t think I even need to consider Huntsman’s service under Obama. Looking at his tenure as Utah governor is enough to turn me off. He’s not going to be any different than Romney. Why bother to push for him? Has he said anything more drastic on the campaign trail?

One happy fact of life is that if you wait long enough, someone else will do your work for you. Some industrious people at CATO actually went through each of the candidates websites and compiled their likely spending position for each federal government department. Make sure you check it out. Frankly it’s worthy of a post all to itself. Regarding Reinhard Huntsman, he seems to have the most question marks on his positions. This does not enthuse me.

Huntsman isn’t worth bothering with.

And so it begins…

Occupy flash mob fails to impress Walmart workers

The Occupy crowd threatened promised said they would do some protesting on Black Friday. I doubted it, but I’m glad to see I was wrong. I hope those smelly fools “occupy” everything. Disrupt checkout lines, crash through all the crowds waiting to get into stores. There’s no better way to make America hate you than to make the chaos of Black Friday even worse.

I’m not talking about Thomas Jefferson. I just read about the Defend Rural America conference that took place last week up in Siskiyou County. I didn’t attend so I can’t give a first-hand account of the meeting, but from what I can glean off the Internet, the conference was very California-focused. In a nutshell, the problem is that the federal and state government is making it impossible to make a living in rural California. What I find most interesting though is the attendance of the “Constitution Sheriffs” who will speak about their concerns with the growing tangle of regulations coming from the capitols.

And I bother to note this because its pretty significant to get the local government to actively speak out against another part of the government. It shows there’s a lot of frustration in those parts. I’m a little disappointed the idea wasn’t tossed out there already, but there is a catchy solution. Resurrect the State of Jefferson! This will give these rural counties freedom from an oppressive Sacramento government, and their own voice in Washington DC.

I hope more of these folks remember the State of Jefferson can be more than just a state of mind.

Working its way through the Israeli Knesset is a bill declaring Jordan as the Palestinian nation. It has nearly half of the parliament’s support. If passed, the bill would have West Bank Palestinians choose between Israeli or Jordanian citizenship. What’s unclear to me is the status of West Bank land under this plan. That’s irrelevant though, if you follow the Christian Science Monitor’s opinion that the idea is crazy. Now the CSM doesn’t say that directly, but read this article and try not to notice how they paint the proposal as madness.

Is it madness? Geert Wilders doesn’t think so. Although I can see how he can be dismissed. He’s not the right sort, so there’s no need to pay attention to his opinion. Don’t remember who he is? I’ll help. Geert Wilders is the head of the Freedom Party, the third largest political party in the Netherlands, and just came off a strong electoral showing. That’s a little hard to translate into American terms, since we don’t have a parliamentary system. I guess Wilders would be similar in stature to a powerful senator. Yet despite being chosen by a significant portion of the Dutch electorate, Wilders should just be ignored because he doesn’t have the right kind of opinions. He’s a right-winger. Oh he’s a neo-fascist. Nevermind that a large chunk of the Dutch electorate voted for him. He’s clearly a crazy person on the fringe.

We can ignore Wilders, but Camie Davis has dug up some choice quotes on the topic.

• “We are the government of Palestine, the army of Palestine and the refugees of Palestine.”
  - Prime Minister of Jordan, Hazza’ al-Majali, 23 August 1959
• “Palestine and Transjordan are one.”
  - King Abdullah, Arab League meeting in Cairo, 12 April 1948
• “Palestine is Jordan and Jordan is Palestine; there is one people and one land, with one history and one and the same fate.”
  - Prince Hassan, brother of King Hussein, addressing the Jordanian National Assembly, 2 February 1970
• “Jordan is not just another Arab state with regard to Palestine, but rather, Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan in terms of territory, national identity, sufferings, hopes and aspirations.”
  - Jordanian Minister of Agriculture, 24 September 1980
• “The truth is that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan.”
  - King Hussein 1981

Should King Hussein and King Abdullah be ignored? Who wants to dismiss them as people who know nothing about Middle Eastern history and politics?

This is why history is important. Israel should be throwing these quotes in the face of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Arab League and the EU. Force all of them to publicly abrogate these ideas and explain why, before any movement on negotiations happen.

America has four car companies again! GM has sold the Saturn franchise to Roger Penske. I never believed it would happen. I’m glad to have the choice in the marketplace.

Technically though this is probably a temporary situation. Once Fiat buys Chrysler, will Chrysler still count as an American car company anymore? The business will take its orders from Turin even if Fiat doesn’t own a controlling percentage of Chrysler shares. Well, maybe it will still be American. Mazda is still Japanese right, even though Ford tells it what to do.

Even though Penske won’t be building cars it does leave some exciting possibilities for the future. GM will provide Saturn vehicles for the first few years, but eventually Penske will contract with other automakers and rebadge their vehicles. What could we have in store? From what I read online, most people expect rebadged Renaults. That idea surprises me because Renault and Nissan are allied, so why would Nissan allow itself to compete against its ally’s cars in the US? I expect Nissan would veto any move by Renault to sell cars to Penske. I hope so anyway. I don’t care for Renault’s lineup (based on UK models). The Laguna coupe is the only exception and I’m still not that excited about it.

I sure as hell don’t want Penske to import the New Kangoo.

I would think Citroen or Peugeot might be a possibility. They’re a large company without any ties to the US. Neither of their lineups interest me either though. Here you can see Citroen and Peugeot in the UK. My heart still skips a beat for the Citroen C5 however. If the C5 Airscape is ever made and sold as a Saturn I’ll sell my ass on the street to get one.

Certainly Fiat is out of the running since they’re taking on Chrysler. That also rules out Alfa Romeo since it’s a part of the Fiat Group. I can’t really think of any other European manufacturers that could possibly supply a US car company. No American is going to buy an AvtoVAZ.

Representing Asia… I think Proton is a strong possibility. They sell in the UK and Australia so they’re familiar with first world safety standards, and they’re a bargain leader. I could see them supplying Penske with one or two compact, fuel-efficient cars; perhaps a small SUV as well. Nothing they make excites me though.

Other than Proton, Asia doesn’t have much to offer Penske. South Korea’s two biggest native manufacturers, Hyundai and Kia, already sell in the US. That leaves SsangYong which is in bankruptcy. I doubt Penske wants to rescue a second failed automaker. Even if he did I don’t recommend he save SsangYong. They manufacture some awkward looking vehicles. Japan doesn’t have any companies that aren’t involved in the US so no sense looking there. That leaves China.

A Chinese manufacturer presents political problems in the US. Penske will have a lot of baggage to deal with in terms of quality questions, safety concerns and a freakout over the loss of US manufacturing to China. The benefit is that Penske has plenty of choice in China – Geely, Great Wall, BYD, Brilliance, Chery, and probably others I can’t think of. I’m sure they would all bend over backwards to crack into the US market. Penske would also provide them with a lot of manufacturing know-how to bring their cars up to US standards. That’s a lot of work for Penske.

Don’t think Penske is going to import cars from several different sources. That would be a collosal headache for maintainance. Dealerships would have to stock parts from so many different companies and train their mechanics on completely different systems. I actually expect Proton to win out. They’re third world cheap but already know how to operate in the first world.

Now we have unemployment the likes of which my generation has never seen. Well we could have seen it but I doubt anyone in my age group was paying attention to unemployment statistics in 1983. Unemployment hit 9.4% today; the worst it has been since August 1983. Most of the media seems to be taking the ‘What, me worry?‘ approach to reporting this fact. Just about every article starts off mentioning the unemployment rate, but then soothes your nerves by talking up the better than expected decline in job losses.

• Job losses slow dramatically says CNN
• US loses just 345,000 jobs in May, raising hopes proclaims Yahoo!
• Jobs Report Is an Upside Surprise declares BusinessWeek

Actually those headlines are pretty damn cheerful, but reality may not turn out to be so. A Barron’s columnist has taken note of some rumors surrounding these unemployment figures. The reduced job loss figure of 345,000 may be an error at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. C’est la vie! We can’t be sure of this trend until we see data for this month, which of course won’t happen until next month.

By the way, with the way a lot of news outlets are discussing that 345,000 drop in jobs you would think they’re discussing a long term, established trend. Remember though, this is actually a one data point trend, and a single data point is pretty meaningless. Repeat that to yourself the next time you see or hear a report about this fantastic new employment trend we’re in.

Aside from this irrational exuberance, I’ve noticed one question not asked; one key statistic not given today. What’s the funemployment number? I’m positive we can’t have 9.4% sad sacks moping through their days looking for work. The LA Times found some people living it up without a pesky job. Ex-Yahoo Michael Van Gorkom is hanging out at the beach with his new best friend, the margarita. Aubrey Howell’s busiest task has been visiting family since she’s joined the ranks of the funemployed.

I was (f)unemployed once. I graduated college into the Internet recession in 2001, and then moved to Silicon Valley. For seven months I puttered around the apartment I couldn’t afford to live in. In that summer I watched every single episode of the original Battlestar Galactica, and learned Galactica 1980 is unwatchable. I’d spend afternoons driving aimlessly trying to learn the roads of my new home. I look back on that with misery. I ran through my savings and ran up credit card debt trying to feed myself, pay my car loan and pay my rent. How any of these people can feel relaxed and happy when they don’t have an income is beyond my understanding.

So what’s the point of my rambling? The media is carrying water for the White House. We have a job market that is only getting worse, but who in the fourth estate is actually calling out our esteemed leader over it? These mainstream news outlets are sugarcoating today’s bad news with soft headlines. The LA Times is inventing a new term – funemployment – to persuade the millions of newly unemployed people that it’s not so bad. So what if you don’t have penny left to your name. Go hit those batting cages!

The media is a disgrace and the country is going to hell in a handbasket. Same old, same old.

UPDATE: Wow, I thought I was pushing it by saying the news media were protecting Obama from criticism by shielding negative news about unemployment. Then Newsweek’s editor, Evan Thomas, one ups everyone by going on MSNBC to say Obama is “sort of God.” It’s unbelieveable how nakedly pro-Obama these guys are.

A man placed an ad on Craigslist looking for another man to rape his wife while he watched. To be clear, his wife was not into this. This wasn’t a couple trying to spice up their relationship. Now I don’t know if he first tried to get her excited about it and she rejected this idea, or if he hatched this completely in his head.

We’re not that far off from eating babies. Seriously now, does human behavior get any more depraved than this? People have always done horrible things to each other, but what appalls me about this is this guy’s betrayal of his wife. I think it goes without saying that you don’t offer up your friends or family to be raped. I suppose you’re also not supposed to do that to complete strangers too, but if you’re sick enough to do it, you would think you would start with a stranger. Instead this guy offers up his wife, the person he is supposed to be closest to, so he could get a sexual thrill.

Really now, does it get worse than this? I could imagine someone answering back that maybe if the guy offered up his children instead of his wife, but I don’t see that as a great deal different. He would still be torturing his close family to get a cheap thrill.

I’d like someone to ask him what he thought would be the end of result of his action. Did he expect his wife to turn to him at the end and say, “Wow hun! That rape was hot! I’m going to cook you your favorite dinner,” and everything would work out for him? Did he actually think this was totally worth going to jail for?

Stick a fork in the human race. We’re done.

And another special election graces California. I really wish that “divide the state” proposal was on this month’s ballot. It would be perfect placement too because this election is the one where the state legislature gets cowardly and tries to get the public to cosign their budget compromise. I’ve never heard of a special election being needed to pass an annual budget, but hey, California is a trend setter. You other 49 states pay attention.

To my surprise it looks like there is some real anger brewing among the populace. The five ballot measures needed to pass the compromise budget are polling poorly. I actually had the impression people would blindly accept any budget after the long budget showdown we had a few months ago. Perhaps it has been the events at the federal level that have stirred up some anger, but it looks like Californians want to reject these measures altogether to send a message they’re tired of a state government that never stops growing. Remember a few weeks ago I wrote about California’s epic budget expansion? I guess I’m not the only one to notice an unending trend of higher government spending. Over the last ten years spending has risen 60%, but what has that gotten us? Did it really improve our lives, or didn’t you notice it? Why do you have to pay higher taxes and fees for that?

The prevailing sentiment among us angry taxpayers is that we should reject all five budget measures to send a strong message to the legislature. I agreed with that until I sat down to read the measures in my voter guide. Let’s look at these one-by-one.

Prop 1A: Changes to State Budget Process.

Remember how the legislature assured us all those tax hikes were ONLY for two years? This makes them last four years. It also performs a bunch of complicated adjustments to the rainy day fund, but the short version is that it expands it. Those complicated adjustments are probably just a ploy to give this ballot initiative a meaningless name like “changes to state budget process” instead of “raising your taxes even more”.

Prop 1B: Education Funding. Payment Plan.

This authorizes payments to schools from the rainy day fund starting in 2011. These payments are essentially repayments of budget cuts schools are getting now.

Prop 1C: Lottery Modernization Act.

This proposition would “modernize” the state lottery with higher jackpots and more advertising. Oh and it would also allow the state to issue bonds against future, expected lottery revenues, but pay no attention to that. That’s just a piddling little nothing provision that doesn’t matter at all.

Prop 1D: Protects Children’s Services Funding.

This protects funding for certain children’s services programs by cutting funding to other children’s services programs. Prop 98 established required spending rules for a program called First 5. This prop would permit the legislature to transfer money away from that to fund other social programs.

Prop 1E: Mental Health Services Funding.

This is similar to 1D except this involves mental health programs instead of children’s social services.

Prop 1F: Elected Officials’ Salaries.

This denies any pay raises to the legislature and any constitutional officers in deficit years.

As you can guess 1F is the outlier here. It’s not part of the legislature’s budget plan. Conservative rage is pounding the table over 1A through 1E and as I mentioned there is a ‘vote it all down’ movement brewing. I planned to take part in that as soon as I heard we would have a special election over the budget. Screw the legislature! I wasn’t going to let them pass the buck to me. Once I actually read these propositions I took a more nuanced view. Here’s what I voted on my mail-in ballot and why.

1A: No! I’m not going to vote to allow these idiot politicians to raise my taxes. The cycle of ever higher taxes needs to break somewhere.

1B: No! No! The school system should learn to tighten their belts just like everyone else. Repaying a budget cut is asinine.

1C: No! No! No! A thousand times NO! Borrowing against future lottery receipts is not reform. It’s just more of the borrow and spend policies that have ruined this state’s finances.

1D: Uhmmm, well, yea. I have always hated the many propositions that tie up California’s spending. We elect a legislature but can’t trust them to plan a budget? If you don’t think your representative is able, capable or trustworthy enough to make decisions on spending, stop voting for them. It’s an idiotic situation. I decided to vote yes because I’m happy to undermine this type of spending. Besides, it’s not a new tax. The legislature wants to shift spending from one program to another. I don’t object to that. It’s the sort of decision that legislators exist to make.

1E: Yes here too; Same logic as with 1D.

1F: Hell yes! I can understand the argument that this is pointless populism, but it won’t cause any harm and yet it will send a resounding ‘screw you’ to our elected officials.

I guess I’ve failed the purity test so there will be no GOP nominations for me. I’ll be happy to see props 1A through 1C fail, and I wouldn’t mind if 1D and 1E fail too. Right now the polls are in my favor but the ‘yes’ ads are starting on TV. I hope their repetition doesn’t hypnotize the population, but I fear it will. Something needs to be done to stop our tax and spend irresponsibility. The failure of these propositions will force the legislature to go back to work on the state budget. Either they will have to accept the blame for raising taxes again, or actually make serious budget cuts.

Our president is “to challenge government agencies to cut costs,” in the words of Reuters. That makes a fantastic headline. Instead of being the profilgate spender, Obama is casting himself as a budget watchdog. If you take a moment to read the article you’ll see he’s calling on his cabinet to find $100 million in cuts. That’s $100 million out of $3.5 trillion. Put another way that’s $100 million out of $3,500,000 million.

Economics professor Greg Mankiw puts the proposed cut in even clearer terms.

[I]magine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall. How much would he or she announce that spending had be cut? By $3 over the course of the year–approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks. The other $33,997? We can put that on the family credit card and worry about it next year.

Such bold action. Obama’s really going to tame that budget. In all seriousness, that’s not the point of this exercise. What will happen is that each cabinet department will cut tiny amounts from hundreds of programs. It will all be inconsequential sums but it will give Democrat pundits an important talking point. When they go on cable news or the Sunday morning public affairs shows, they can then say, “President Obama has cut thousands of government programs. He’s a fiscal hawk.”

My only guess on the timing is that the Tea Parties must have spooked the White House. Why else bother with creating the illusion of caring about the budget?