George Rebane

– Cities contemplating Chapter 9 bankruptcy
– Small nuclear reactors
– States sinking under weight of public unions
– Government spending outpaces all
– Tea parties successfully keep distance from major political parties
– Joe Biden takes credit for Iraq

More and more cities across the land are now contemplating going into Chapter 9 bankruptcy, the kind reserved for municipalities and government institutions.  The common ball and chain dragging them under are the public employee unions about which I have spilled quite a bit of ink.  It boggles the mind how the hard left continues to deny the whole thing as they vote for bigger and bigger government.  Meanwhile, the rest of us should keep a wary eye on any municipal bonds we may still have in their investment accounts.  (more here)

Nuclear reactors are becoming smaller and easier to install in more locations (here and here).  Obama’s administration is doing everything it can to appear pro-nuclear to the independents.  But the careful reader will have no problem discovering that the initial stimulating billions are targeted for utilities to help them fund the draconian permitting processes that they have to negotiate.  This lets our Chief Organizer play both sides of the street.  Well, not actually both sides – just the left and the center – to one claiming a wink-wink ‘we’ll never let ‘em build’ and to the hopefuls ‘see, we’re making positive moves to energy independence’.  The whole thing appears to many of us as just another preamble to cap n’ tax in the hope that Climategate blows over.   And then again, maybe not – after all, the guy is first and last a politician.

Cities aren’t the only ones feeling the weight of public service unions.  The Pew Center on the States has completed an analysis of the states’ government employee benefit liabilities and published a report on the damages to date (here).  The unfunded benefit liabilities gap for the states is now in the one trillion dollar range.  RR readers have been aware of this approaching train wreck for the last year or two when it was considered arcane knowledge, and rabidly denied by those not paying attention, and, of course, our progressive brethren.

Henninger in the 18feb10 WSJ makes the case that our problems continue to be mired in government spending which now seems to be accelerating.  On the theory that too much spending got us here, then we must fight fire with fire and spend even more to get us out of our fiscal mess.  Argentina and Greece are poster kids for what’s in store for us as the embrace of socialism spreads across the country.  The only pushback that seems to be getting any traction against this idiocy is the tea party movement.  Politicians contemplating having to get a real job have been known to do marvelous things, among them being the discovery of prudence.

Speaking of tea parties, most observers now agree that the movement should keep its distance from both/all major political parties.  Some state level Republicans are attempting to climb on the bandwagon through launching ‘Tea Party Republicans’ efforts in attempt to coordinate their own efforts with that of the their local tea parties.  This is a bad idea as Karl Rove argues here.  As a tea partier, I think that our strength comes from the declared core values of the movement based on the Constitution.  As an ideologically tight and organizationally loose confederacy of hundreds of nationwide of patriot organizations, the tea parties have the biggest political clout in the country today.  Just add up the numbers.  (BTW, I liked being called a ‘tea bagger’ better, especially after Pelosi and her crowd sneered that as an epithet at us.  But then more street savvy people advised me that tea bagger had some connotational baggage that detracted from its use in polite company.)  And Russ Steele discovered that Pajamas Media has started Tea Party TV (here).

Finally, it’s amazing how the Dems are now realizing that they were for surge type policies in Iraq, and now Afghanistan, in the first place.  Old Joe ‘The Lip’ Biden is out on the hustings claiming credit from one and all for the achievements of the Iraqi surge.  Of course the dynamic duo of our Pres and VP were the leaders in putting down the surge when W, that dimwitted cowpoke from Texas, put it into operation.  Methinks that Joe’s claims are nothing more than a hat tip to Big Al and his ‘invention’ of the Internet.  Hell, if it worked for Gore, why not for Biden?

And some chuckles.