Redstate

What's with that?!  Has he been reading Kos recently?

At least Republicans pretend to aspire to hold the line on spending.  The absence of even that pretense is what makes the Dems frightening.  Well, that and a 40-year track record as the House majority.

So what, exactly, is keeping the Republicans from my checkbook?

The specter of "tax and spend Democrats" is pretty ineffective when Republicans are just as bad.

I do think the current group in power are spending at a truly shameful rate, and yes, they DO need to be punished, IMHO - if they won't listen on the phone, maybe they need to find a little fear on the leadup to eleciton day!  I can't fathom why the President hasn't flexed his veto muscles to force some fiscal responsibility. Sorry - a little demoralized here.

All that aside, Moran needs to be credibly challenged - this sort of comment is outrageous, and should be easily leveragable, especially since the Dems are doing their darndest to paint Republicans as borrow-and-spend.  If nothing else, make Moran spend some of his own money to hold onto his seat.

close to 75 years with the FDR tyranny that started all of this New Democrat/ Federal government spending BS.      

"Moran and his two Republican Northern Virginia counterparts - U.S. Reps. Frank Wolf, R-10th, and Tom Davis, R-11th - essentially mapped out their own redistricting plan after the 1990 federal census, and handed it to the General Assembly for action."

Isn't this what Delay was vilified for????????

I'm ashamed he's my congressman.  Even without my support, he routinely gets 60% or more of the vote, no matter what he says or does, so I just shrug and grumble.  Yes, the Democrats are worse in most respects, and I'd dearly like the GOP to hold on to the House, but "our treachery is better than their principle" is not an inspiring campaign slogan.  The real problem with the party is the one Republican who isn't up for re-election:  The president.  Nothing can be done about him, but people are angry, and Congress is the only available target.  

MUST NOT get hold of the purse strings.

Another compelling reason to support and vote for your local Republican candidate.

If you need more incentive, just do an "It's A Wonderful Life" scenario in your head.

Instead of 'Hastert Falls', imagine 'Pelosiville' and all that would entail.

gerrymandering has a very long history: the Dems perfected the practice (that's one way they maintained their majority for so long).  But it is just plain bad for the country, no matter who does it - I'd really rather districting be done completely objectively to make certain that our reps don't just redistrict to protect their own jobs.  I have no clue what the result would be... probably a wash, I suppose, though a major shake-up. If nothing else, it would be interesting to watch many reps having to deal with constituencies that are no longer so monochromatic.

On the other hand DeLay, IIRC, redistricted off-cycle, so it was a little more obvious than usual.

The vast majority of people are not angry. The economy is great, they have jobs, inflation has not been a concern for years. Do they wish Iraq was over? Yes, who doesn't. High gas prices? I bet the enviros are taking the fall they deserve. Illegal immigration? Deport eveyone but my maid and gardner. Does Bush have high numbers? No, but rational people don't care because he ain't running again. If anything, the CA 50 race just proved this beyond doubt. The leadership of the White Flag Party is so ideologically ingrained with anger, that they think everyone else must be angry too. In reality, they are marching on the castle with pitchforks and torches, but the majority of the village is watching American Idol.

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert, but it seems to me that we are headed into some interesting territory here. Quoting a buddy of mine back in the Colorado State Legislature, "If you want to know about politics just follow the money." Politics, and to some extent government, is about redistribution of wealth. You can put any spin you like on it, but the bottom line is the bottom line. Republicans typically argue for states rights these days. Why? Because the states should have more money. Democrats typically argue for bigger, better social programs. Why? It allows them to send money directly to the projects and programs that they favor. While I don't exactly condone his language, Moran is just doing what every politician does: Use his seniority and politcal capital to redistribute wealth to his constituents. He's at least up front about it.
Conservatives will argue that spending ought to be limited and not frivolous. Liberals, who have been labeled "tax and spend" will argue that it ought to be directed at irreligous, "non-partisan," groups with no profit-motive. Republicans desperately want to protect the profit motive because it encourages things like lobbying and large political contributions that help them get reelected.
The problem with earmarks like Murkowski and Stevens' "Bridge to Nowhere" was that they couldn't, wouldn't, or didn't want to articulate that they wanted the bridge so that development interests would come along and make it a "Bridge to Somewhere." I don't think Alaska would really exist as a state if it weren't for earmarks. The problem is that when you don't articulate the purpose of the earmark it just becomes a roiling vat of pork that stains and allows the opposition to make their smearmark.

run.  Seriously.  He's not running unopposed, is he??

Whatever you do, don't just "shrug and grumble" - be a player, not a pawn.

An honest and credible alternative to such an irresponsible attitude can't hurt.  Heck, 60% is not 90%: ask someone what it is like to live in MA.

The problem is NOT the President (though he isn't helping much) but that the Republican majority was too successful, too quickly. Naked corruption (like, say, Jefferson) needs to be denounced by the affiliated party immediately or the party SHOULD pay the price.

Alexander Tyler, (in his 1770 book, Cycle of Democracy):

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over a louse fiscal responsibility, always followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world's great civilizations before they decline has been 200 years. These nations have progressed in this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage."

Is this why we have a "Democratic Republic"? Can it shield us from such a demise? Can it prevent mob rule?

Snopes.com has the details: to be honest, it just didn't look right to be a 18th Century quote (although watch it be true after all, now that I've said something)...

That we have a few options.  We can all get together under this somewhat disgruntled tent and keep the Republican-led Congress and make effective and meaningful incremental efforts like we did with John Shadegg.  There is a lot of time to extend those efforts and convince people we mean it if we can just hold on to the Congress.  On the other hand, we can decide not to care and let the whole process just take care of itself, which is, frankly, what people do in the final few seconds before they know they're going to crash into a big object anyway.  But I certainly don't think we're there.  Or we can be retributive and actively help the Democrats win, which will mean that all of the things we've worked so hard to even establish a foothold on will be lost for another election cycle.

I know that there are people who really play this kind of game much harder than I do at our nation's colleges and universities and start thinking about crazy scenarios like:  "Would a lame-duck Bush actually be better off with a Democrat-led Congress and a demoralized base?" but that is not the kind of world I want to see.

In the words of Karl Malden in the old AmEx commercial:  "What do you do?"  My answer is to support the cause, and keep working for positive change.  It isn't going to happen overnight, folks.  Get over the McDonaldland Theory of Government.

not to mention an anti-Semite

There was a strong primary challenge to him after he blamed the Iraq War on the Jewish lobby, by a liberal Jewish Democrat, and Moran still won.

I don't understand why the Democrats stand by him.

was a bridge to nowhere at one time.  There were 4000 people on the other side when the Golden Gate was built.

Alaska would be a weathy state without the earmarks, but those projects are as justified as any and more justified than many of the "internal improvements" in which the federal government engages.

Alaska would be a much wealthier state had it not been ruthlessly exploited while a federal district and territory.  Untold wealth was taken from Alaska in gold and copper, fish, timber, furs etc. to make people in Seattle, SF, and New York wealthy while Alaska's Native people lived in the Stone Age and its White people lived in penury.

Under federal control, all it took was the right political connection to have monopoly control over any resource here.  Large SEA and SF companies were granted monopoly rights to the river mouths where they built traps for the salmon and posted armed guards to keep the locals away.  In so doing, they virtually destroyed the salmon fishery.  There's a reason that Alaska's Constitution uniquely has a specific provision declaring that all citizen will have equal access to resources and that all resouces will be used for the common good.

The Knik Arm Bridge will eliminate a fifty mile drive around Knik Arm and give a direct link from the Port of Anchorage and Anchorage International Airport, the largest air cargo port in the world, to the continental road system via the Alaska Highway.  The WWII era Alaska Highway actually links a series of airports in Alaska and Canada on the Great Circle route from the interior US to Asia.  The ultimate purpose of the Knik Bridge is to provide a container route from Asia to the interior US for cargo that isn't valuable or time sensitive enough for air shipping but too valuable or time sensitive to plod directly across the Pacific to SEA, SF, or LA.  That should give you some indication why the delegations from WA and CA are so opposed to it.

The Ketchikan Bridge is more of a local project to link the City of Ketchikan to its airport located on an island accessible only by ferry.  The present ferry system is expensive, inconvenient, and severely limits access to air freight service for Ketchikan.  It admittedly does not have the general utility that the Knik project does, but it isn't like all the other large bridges in the country were built from local funds.  In fact, almost none of them were, nor most of the highways, levees, dams, irrigation systems, water supply systems, and on, and on.

These projects just got caught up in the "too much spending" dynamic and gave the perfect opportunity for WA and CA to try to preserve their monopoly on shipping from the Pacific Rim.  Were I in a position to make the decision, I'd cheerfully forego federal funds for the two bridges if the delegations from WA and CA would lead the charge to repeal the Jones Act that gives those states an exploitative monopoly on all shipping up and down the West Coast and to Alaska and Hawaii.  Their port fees and piratical longshoremen and mariners exhorbitantly drive up the cost of everything consumed in Alaska and Hawaii and I live for the day when I can buy something that has never seen the port of Seattle or Tacoma.

And whatever else we are, we are one of the largest natural resource extraction enterprises in the World.  At the peak of production, the North Slope was providing 25% of America's oil and if we could get the Greenies and fools off our back on ANWR and other oil development could readily restore that level of production.  Even at today's production, one hiccup in Alaska oil production would turn all those Escalades down in Ecotopia into lawn ornaments.

Heinlein laid out the same progression of civilizations in his Methuselah series and I think history bears it out.

...scottbomb's point, and my sincere apologies to him if it came out that way.

Politics, and to some extent government, is about redistribution of wealth.

Government is about turning your opinion into law.  Politics is how you do it.

Redistribution of wealth is just an illigitimate part of that.  It has turned into an unhealhily large illigitimate part of it, but that's only because We The People have discovered how to vote ourselves free bread.  

Republicans desperately want to protect the profit motive because it encourages things like lobbying and large political contributions that help them get reelected.

I assume you're quoting here, but I can't figure out who said it:  Fidel Castro, Theodore Kaczynski, or Howard Dean.

Last time I checked, our economic system is based on capitalism. Profit is not a dirty word. Why, even some businesses controlled by Democrats turn a profit.

until the last sentence there.  I consider myself one of those Greenies, and you wouldn't catch me alive in one of those Escalades.  I know you don't owe it to me, but maybe you can explain the last sentence to me.  As far as a I know most of the Greenies here in Ecotopia would rather be riding their bikes or driving a hybrid than an Escalade.  Maybe Dems and Reps are both driving those beast SUV's, but as far as I'm concerned they SHOULD be relegated to lawn ornament status.

But then, I'm a Greenie.

some businesses controlled by Democrats turn a profit

Yes, and it pains them greatly as they tote up their assets. As a result they then make campaign contributions to other Democrats who promise to assuage their guilt by taking money away from thee and me.

Honesty I cannot recall where I first read that quote. I've had it on my own website for years and I got it from a source I believed to be credible (though I cannot recall the source). Interesting.

It does make a good point, but I will probably go back to my site to add a disclaimer in reference to the authenticity.

is the name some Geographer gave to the strip west of the mountains from SD to SEA.  He refered to the area west of the mountains as the Empty Quarter and posits, rightly I think, that the wealthy and pampered lifestyle of Ecotopia derives from wealth produced by resource extraction in the Empty Quarter.

The hypocrisy of it is that while indulging in that lifestyle, the people of Ecotopia assuage their consciences by being totally antidevelopment.

One of the reasons behind the current bitterness between Alaska's delegation and the WA delegation is the fact that prior to the dot.com era, WA lived off Alaska and still derives much of its wealth from Alaska trade.  Yet Cantwell et al. are opposed to everything that would help develop Alaska; more tanker and refinery capacity on the West Coast, ANWR and other Arctic Slope oil and gas developement, etc.

Maybe activist ideological Greenies aren't driving Escalades, but lots of other anti-developement types are driving SUVs, boats, private jets, etc., so allow me a little literary license to make the point.

to vote for some of the Rs, but I can't think of a single D I'd vote for.  And you're going to be hard pressed to convince me to oppose an electable R incumbent unless he's under a real indictment (not the political indictment that any D District Attorney can come up with) or clearly has his hand in the cookie jar.

It might actually get used if Moran & co. are in charge.

I'm just sayin', that's one line of reasoning in the "It Can't Get Any Worse If The 'Suckatude' Is In Charge After 2006"...

I am glad to see a fellow Alaskan here.

You did forget 1 thing, however.  The reason Stevens was fighting so hard for the Bridge:  Getting the people on the Ketchikan Arm access to medical care during storms that put the ferry out of service.

My issue with it, though, is that we did Not need Federal money for it.  We don't Want Federal money for it.

Federal money brings Federal (out of state)Contractors who don't understand or care about the structural requirements created by the weather and geography, etc.  They don't build to meet those requirements and we have to spend More money to fix what they did wrong.

We needed to keep the funding and the contractors instate.

that does not:

A) Collect Taxes

B) Put those monies toward some socialized good as the common defense; police; education; or even a dictator's own personal use.

Hence, all government is to some extent about a collection of resources and a redistribution of those resource to a publicly identified need.

Secondarily, name a single American politician that has not:

A) Attempted to collect campaign contributions

B) Made political promises, including funding promises, to their constituents.

Thank you. Please write again if you have any concerns.

that profit was a dirty word. And if you didn't think that it was then you wouldn't have seen any need to defend against what you thought was an attack on my part.

In my view, protecting the profit motive is the key to Republican electoral domination.

Q: What's the Difference between Democratic ear marks and Republican ear marks?

A: Nothing, their are both Pork, maybe slightly different cuts, but still "The Other White Meat"

contractors, since the money would be appropriated by the State and the contracts let by DOT&PF.  That said, they might very well be outside contractors.  The real issue with all the concrete and steel spending is that most everybody in Alaska that can and wants to work is working, so any labor for a big project will be imported.  Since we no longer have an income tax, the only people who'll make any money off that labor are union dispatchers taking bribes and prostitutes.  The rest of us will have to pay for all the crime, social welfare, and education that the influx will bring.

I knew about the Medivac flights, but there's only so much you can say, and most people reading wouldn't have a clue anyway.  I hate those ferries.  KTN is the only place I've ever missed a plane that didn't involve a woman.

a little bit harder about this Socrates:

Government is about turning your opinion into law. Politics is how you do it.

I think that government and politics might be just slightly more complex than that.

So now "pretending to want to hold the line" is a virtue?  Talk about lowering expectations.  Neither ideology nor individual willpower is sufficient to reign in spending.  Only a procedural mechanism like pay-go will do the trick (which the GOP shot down earlier this year - I don't know if the Dems would actually pass it were they in power, but the GOP should've seen a good idea and jumped on it.  It was good enough for the GOP in the Clinton years, after all)

All spending policy is one form of redistribution or another, isn't it?  For instance, we pay for highways, but if I don't use highways, I don't reap the reward.  Similarly, if I live in a gated community, the value of police will be less valuable a good for me than someone without access to a private police force.  

Paygo was a nice idea, but in practice it only serves to ratchet up taxes, because of its simplistic and statist view of tax relief and spending hikes as equivalent.

Give me a paygo that only applies to spending, NOT to tax cuts, and I can support it, though.

...to borrow money in the credit of the United States.  Isn't that a blank check right there in Article I?

If the Congress were serious about cutting spending (p), they'd pass either Paygo or some variant thereof (q).

~p > ~q.

by all means build it.

But since it's not an interstate commerce issue, Alaskans should pay for it, all of it.

I meant ~q > ~p.  Drrrrrr.....

The Congress has broad authority to do things however it wants, but Paygo was a rule Congress placed on itself controlling how that authority would be used.

that taxing to produce a public good and taxing to redistribute are two fundamentally different things. I choose not to jump through the mental hoops necessary to label all public goods redistribution. I find that it is much easier to understand redistribution as a bad opinion that someone has managed to have written into law.

Most of the persons in this thread are making the fallacious assumption that persons only vote by political party or political ideology. Their are many factors.

It is obvious to many  voters. They  support free market capitalism, but it isn't perfect at  rewarding everybody the "fruits of their labors."  Therefore, we have government which redistributes wealth back and forth.  The question is whether this interferes with the creation of wealth and restricts economic freedom.

Some  rich Conservative  Republicans  have been rewarded through government redistribution programs too!  They just give these programs  names other than welfare.

Neither side is pure.  It is just a matter of the lesser of two evils.

...is they are the party that seems more committed to protection of our Capitalist system. If that's what you mean by "profit motive", well, fine.

Our economy is not a zero-sum game. At least from a Republican point of view, there is not a finite amount of money that we're all fighting over how to "redistribute". Capitalism is about value creation, and that has a multiplicative effect as it works its way thru the economy.

An electoral majority has the good sense to realize this, and they contribute to and vote for pro-business politicians.

I think what we've seen is the Delay strategy: sacrifice fiscal conservativism in order to preserve a majority that can institute conservativism in other policy areas.  Fiscal conservativism just isn't high up on the list of priorities.  I'd prefer Newt's emphasis on fiscal conservativism, but Delay has done a good job of entrenching the GOP, even if it has come at the price of some aspects of fiscal conservatism.

The real problem with the party is the one Republican who isn't up for re-election:  The president

May I ask who you think would have to be President in order to fix the real problem with the Republican party?

I sincerely would like to know your opinion on that, even though I think (and it is only fair that I should answer the same question) that I think he is what is right with the party.

Actually, Clausewitz taught us war is politics by other means.  Thus politics is war by other means.  If a=b then b=a.  Both are about forcing your will on other people to do or not to do something, one in a civil manner and the other by force.  That's all politics and government are at the end of the day, forcing your will on other people, same as war by civil means and the rule of law.  

This is a fundamental reason as to why conservatives believe in limited government, because one should never force their will on others more than absolutely necessary.  Working through the freewill of others is the preferred exchange.  It is also why liberals are so tyrannical and sympathize with tyrants.  At the end of the day, they're all about forcing their will on other people for the sake of social engineering which they justify in part through their perceived moral superiority.

All your legislature friend sees is the offense side, taking other people's money for redistribution in this case.  The conservative and Republican side is the defense side, defending freedom, the freedom to keep the fruits of one's labor.  But if your legislature friend is a Republican, it certainly explains the predicament we are in.  Too many Republicans have lost site of one of the party's fundamental principles, the defense of freedom which includes the freedom from having your money stolen through the ballot box.  Anyone who sees the ballot box as a means to redistribute other people's money is a RINO.

The Rs in charge of Appropriations pork barrel with the best and act like their fiscal conservatives.  Score one for honesty for the Ds, at least they don't act like they want smaller government.

Capitalism is about value creation. Economies are not finite. I don't think anything I said implies that economies are zero-sum--just that wealth is generated, a portion is taken by the government and applied at various levels throughout the country to various ends--"redistribution."

to which that standard applies?  In any event, but the definition of "interstate commerce" that has been applied since the '30s both would effect commerce.

At an ideological level, I could agree with you that the Fed shouldn't do most of the stuff it does in the name of commerce.  Why, though, should we be the first and only member of this brave, new, pure world?

than Lower 48 Politics.  We should take the lead ourselves and Present a Standard.

That said, by the explanation you presented for the larger bridge, Interstate Commerce Does apply.  I'll have to check with my folks involved in the project on that point...

out of petty cash if our people weren't so obscessed with their D***ed $1K/yr dividend.  Worst thing we ever did!

say that "Due to budgetary concerns, we have had to reduce the Dividend to $X."

Instead of giving us the usual, increasing amount.

Besides, there's more money in the coffers than that.  The dividend keeps going up because it is an equal distribution of the government's take from the oil money.  If they froze it in place for a few years...

would be a former legislator, governor, whatever.  The whole Alaska economy completely missed the '90s; infrastructure fell apart, wages are so far behind that recruitment for state and other public jobs is almost impossible, and rather than spend the money we should have spent, we were paying out almost $2K dividends to a people who've just become addicted.  It's disgusting!

What did I miss?  I left the state when my Air Force father was reassigned to NC in '98.

What has been going wrong since then?  (other than the schools going to pot.  I have a few friends still in school there)