California's budget shortfall has once again reared it's ugly head after a marathon effort to close the huge deficit last year . Now under pressure to close a $21 billion budget shortfall, Sacramento's Legislators might want to take a moment to listen to sound words of advice from Texas Governor Rick Perry.

On Wednesday the Texas Governor took a swipe at Washington and big government, issuing proposals aimed at solidifying the "state's commitment to fiscal discipline."Governor Perry said it's more important than ever to exert fiscal discipline as Washington expands programs that "pile up debt on future generations" according to the Houston Chronicle.

"When government resorts to endlessly expanding its program or throttling economic growth by raising taxes, everyday citizens are the ones that pay that price," Perry told about 40 people at a small business in Lubbock. "As that particular mindset holds sway over Washington, D.C., today I think it is more important than ever to take clear steps to protect our citizens from the excesses of unrestrained government at every level."

As part of a package of budget related proposals, Governor Perry proposed a constitutional amendment to cap the growth of state spending at a level tied to inflation and population growth. The Governor also proposed establishing a state inspector general's office to investigate allegations of fraud and abuse in Texas' governmental agencies. A similar post at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, created by legislators in 2003, has recovered or saved $4.6 billion, he said.

Exit Note: California's state budget watchdog sees a $6.3 billion shortfall for the remainder of the budget year ending in June and $14.4 billion for the following year -- nearly $21 billion in all. California's spending is projected to top $100 billion next year.

There are now more people working in governement than in goods-producing jobs.


For the first time in history there are now more profit-eating government jobs than goods-producing jobs in the United States.

The Goods Producing category currently includes less than a million workers in mining and logging, about 6 million in construction, and 11.7 million in manufacturing. The Government category includes 2.8 million federal employees and almost 20 million state and local workers, just over half of whom work in education.


Clusterstock reported:
In the just-so story of the evolution of our economy, our old manufacturing based economy has been replaced by an innovative knowledge economy. That’s not quite true.

In fact, the decline of the jobs in goods producing sectors of the economy–construction, manufacturing, mining and agriculture–has largely been met with an increase in jobs on the government payroll. We’ve gone from providing jobs in profit-making private industry to providing jobs in profit-eating government work. Toward the end of 2007, the total number of government jobs exceeded the total number of goods producing jobs. Welcome to the government payroll economy.

The average government worker enjoys a $71,000 per year annual salary compared to the average individual working in the private sector who makes just $40,000 per year.

Hat tip: Tom Iacono, who produced a version of this chart here

According to Gallup's first full data set for 2010, the chosen one starts his second year in office with the highest disapproval rating of any President since Eisenhower. Obama begins 2010 with 44% of the public disapproving of the job he's doing as president. That's four points higher than the next closest president (Reagan), six points higher than Bill Clinton, and 17 points higher than Jimmy Carter.

As you can see from Gallup's graphic below, Obama also begins his second year in office with the second worst job approval rating of any president in the last 56 years:

From the war in Iraq to the space station, government programs almost always end up costing much more than they were supposed to. They also usually end up doing more than they were supposed to. Would ObamaCare be any different?

As Nick Gillespie points out in the following video, you don't have to side with those who warn of euthanasia classes to recognize that government programs often end up doing all kinds of things that weren't in politicians' original plans. Call it mission creep. Politicians pass a program, and then the scope of the program grows and changes.

The following is courtesy of the good people at Gatewaypundit....

Barack Obama told Americans numerous times during the 2008 campaign that he was going to hold his health care talks on CSPAN.

He was lying. Democrats have kept the process private all along. They didn’t even give their members enough time to read the bill before it was voted on. They bribed members with $1.2 billion for their votes and this week they decided to hold private negotiations with House and Senate on how to swallow up the health care industry.

C-SPAN asked democrats to keep their word to the American public and quit holding backroom meeting on the government takeover of one-sixth of the nation’s economy.FOX News reported:

The head of C-SPAN has implored Congress to open up the last leg of health care reform negotiations to the public, as top Democrats lay plans to hash out the final product among themselves.

C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb wrote to leaders in the House and Senate Dec. 30 urging them to open “all important negotiations, including any conference committee meetings,” to televised coverage on his network.

“The C-SPAN networks will commit the necessary resources to covering all of the sessions LIVE and in their entirety,” he wrote.

Congressional leaders, however, reportedly are expected to bypass the traditional conference committee process, in which lawmakers from both parties and chambers meet to reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions of a bill. Instead, The Associated Press reports that top Democrats at the House, Senate and White House will figure out the final product in three-way talks before sending it back to both chambers for a final vote.

This format would seem ideal for closed-door meetings, which congressional Democrats have used many times to figure out sensitive provisions in the health care bill — though President Obama pledged during the campaign to open up health care talks to C-SPAN’s cameras.

Mary Katharine Ham has more on the criticism of the democrat’s conference process on health care.

The Obamacare talks this week will once again completely bar GOP lawmakers.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 31 million people currently unemployed -- that's including those involuntarily working parttime and those who want a job, but have given up on trying to find one. In the face of the worst economic upheaval since the Great Depression, millions of Americans are hurting.

Enter what is easily the most impressive (and disheartening) chart of the day, "The Decline: The Geography of a Recession," as created by labor writer LaToya Egwuekwe. This interactive chart serves as a vivid representation of just how greatly our economy is struggling.

Credit to www.latoyaegwuekwe.com/geographyofareces sion.html for the original link and information.

On FOX News Sunday Bill Kristol has set forth a stinging indictment of the Obama admin’s handling of the war on terror.

Newsbusters has more on Kristol's comments:

It was a mistake to treat Abdul Mutallab as a criminal defendant rather than as an enemy combatant: “Mr. Brennan [Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser who appeared earlier] said to you that we’re very worried that there’re other Abdul Mutallabs out there. This Abdul Mutallab was there for four months. He might know who the others are. He might know their names. Will you let him lawyer up?”

… “Closing the embassy in Yemen last night? No one wants State Department officials put at risk, but that is a sign of weakness. Closing the embassy? We can’t protect our own embassy in Yemen, a place where we have special operations forces. A place we say we’re working with the government on the front lines of the war on terror? And there’s a terror threat, and we close the embassy? That’s a victory for al Qaeda. This last week has been a victory for al Qaeda in that region, I’m afraid.”

On a related note: According to this article in the UK's Daily Mail Obama was accused of double standards yesterday in his treatment of the CIA

It's official. President Obama has lost more jobs in one year than any President in modern history.


The unemployment rate was at 10.0% in December.

As we look back over 2009 we can now report that Barack Obama lost more jobs in his first year in office than any president in modern history. Barack Obama lost over 4 million jobs alone since his failed stimulus was passed in February.

USA Today reported:

Even before Barack Obama took the oath of office, his economic advisers projected that without hundreds of billions of dollars in government spending, the U.S. economy could lose another 3 million to 4 million jobs on top of the 3.1 million lost in 2008.

It turns out they were optimistic. Even with the $787 billion stimulus package that Obama signed in February, more than 4 million jobs have been lost in 2009, the worst year for job losses since World War II. The jobless rate that advisers projected would peak at 8% has topped 10%.

And it took him until December to hold a jobs summit to address the problem.

And Doug Ross reports that things are likely to get much worse before they get better.



Hat tip: GatewayPundit