Rick Perry vs World

14 May 2007

With or without incentives

Amarillo financial advisor Jerry Stinson writes in that city's Globe-News:

The fundamental problem with our democracy these days is that most people feel dispossessed and ignored by elected officials, bureaucrats and employees of public institutions.

I called the Washington office of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison to briefly comment on a nominee for a federal commission. A young woman answered the phone. I introduced myself, explained my business and concluded my introduction by asking, "How are you today?"

"I'm very busy," she replied. "What do you want exactly?"

One conclusion might be that this young woman has never had the advantage of training in one of your better charm schools. The probable explanation for her insolent behavior is that she learned it from the senator and other "public servants" around her in the office.

Think of how inefficient big business sometimes is. Make it bigger. Then, add civil service provisions that preclude ever firing employees. Add to that little incentives for managers and you've got...government bureaucracy! Swell.

Of course, I imagine that Senator Hutchison will take action to ensure that this doesn't happen. After all, she does have incentive to do so....that whole Governor's Mansion thing.

Posted by Evan @ 05/14/07 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

I'm busy

The rumor mill is buzzing over whether there will be a challenge of Tom Craddick as speaker of the Texas House.

Best place to follow is at Paul Burka's blog. Lots of fascinating comments.

UPDATE: Toby Belch comments that

Postcards just had a post saying that Gattis, Otto, Hughes and Elkins would not support vacating the chair. Now, Hughes and Elkins were two of the Republicans who voted for a secret ballot, a vote which was seen as a proxy vote for the speaker.

If the Dems cannot get pro-secret abllot Republicans to back vacating the chair, I doubt they will have much luck.

Maybe so, but both Fred Hill and Warren Chisum are on record in the state's newspapers as saying that they expect a challenge to Craddick by the end of the session. That's a pretty big deal that will paralyze the House and jeopardize chances of getting things done without a special session.

And it'll give Perry plenty of political cover to call a special session.

Posted by Evan @ 05/14/07 03:40 PM | Comments (1)

11 May 2007

When it goes to your heart, it's important

National Review editorial

When Rudolph Giuliani announced his presidential run, we hoped that he could find common ground with pro-lifers. For that to happen, we suggested, he would have to follow the model of Kay Bailey Hutchison and the late Paul Coverdell, both pro-choice Republican senators who were allied with pro-lifers on the legislative issues of the day. Behind this advice was the assumption that Giuliani's desire to win some pro-life votes would move him to think seriously about the issue, or at least its political dimension. Judging from the knots in which he has tied himself since then, that thought has not taken place. Whether through conscious decision or inattention, he has not followed the Hutchison/Coverdell model.

The editorial was in response to reports that Rudy is going to come out strongly pro-choice

After months of conflicting signals on abortion, Rudolph W. Giuliani is planning to offer a forthright affirmation of his support for abortion rights in public forums, television appearances and interviews in the coming days, despite the potential for bad consequences among some conservative voters already wary of his views, aides said yesterday.

It's hardly perspicacious of me to point out the obvious, but I will anyway. Rudy is fighting an uphill battle as a pro-Roe candidate. However, that issue alone wouldn't have disqualified him from being the Republican nominee. But when he strongly comes out in favor of abortion weeks after repeatedly saying "I hate it," then he has damaged himself in the most important of ways.

Rudy's strength is that he's a leader who tells the truth. [The one thing he and Fred share? -- ed. Well, maybe not the one thing] When he tries to prevaricate and waffle on abortion, he lowers himself from hero to John Kerry-esque politician.

[Even worse, what does it say about the Giuliani campaign and Giuliani himself that they weren't prepared for this? Everyone has been speculating about how this would play out since 9/11, and they've picked the worst possible muddled message!]

Posted by Evan @ 05/11/07 12:30 AM | Comments (3)

Cornyn is pro-gym

Interesting Cornyn bill:

[T]he WHIP Act seeks to remove barriers to worker wellness
by making fitness center memberships tax-free for employees when provided
as an employee benefit. Current law requires workers to pay income tax on
such wellness benefits.

Introduced in April by Representatives Zach Wamp (R-TN), Mark Udall
(D-CO), Ron Kind (D-WI), and Jim Ramstad (R-MN) in the House, and by
Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) in the Senate, the WHIP
Act already enjoys strong bi-partisan support.

The WHIP Act allows for the balanced tax treatment for the cost of
fitness center memberships as a benefit for all employees, whether the
exercise facility is in-house or located off-site. The bill also affirms an
employer's existing right to deduct the cost of subsidizing or providing
fitness center benefits for its employees. This legislation excludes the
wellness benefit from being considered income for employees, making
employer contributions to the cost of fitness center fees exempt from an
employee's income tax.

Current tax law requires employees to pay income tax on any fitness
center fringe benefit an employer might provide unless the fitness center
is located at their work site.

I'm not a huge fan of social engineering via tax code (think Al Gore, circa 2000), but given how much other stuff is exempted from taxes, this seems reasonable. In a world of second bests and such...

To digress, I think "in a world of second bests" would make a great tombstone. But maybe that's just me.

Posted by Evan @ 05/11/07 12:09 AM | Comments (0)

10 May 2007

Ouch

John Carreyou and Keith Winstein in the WSJ today (subs. req'd):

An editorial published in the New England Journal of Medicine raises questions about the overall effectiveness of Merck & Co.'s cervical-cancer vaccine, Gardasil, and advises policymakers, doctors and parents to adopt "a cautious approach" toward vaccination.

The editorial accompanied a study published in the medical journal analyzing results of a clinical trial of the vaccine, which targets two types of the human papillomavirus thought to cause most cervical cancers and two other types that cause genital warts.

...

In their NEJM editorial, George F. Sawaya and Karen Smith-McCune, members of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote that "a cautious approach" toward vaccination "may be warranted in light of important unanswered questions about overall vaccine effectiveness, duration of protection, and adverse effects that may emerge over time."

The authors called the vaccine's overall efficacy against precancerous lesions of the cervix "modest" and theorized that one reason for this limited efficacy might be that other cancer-causing HPV types fill "the biological niche left behind after the elimination of HPV types 16 and 18." HPV has more than 100 different types, roughly 17 of which are thought to cause cancer.

The scientific consensus on this doesn't seem very settled.

Posted by Evan @ 05/10/07 07:11 AM | Comments (1)

"Rumbles"

Selby buries this in a historical piece:

RUMBLES: State Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, has been urged by Roger Staubach to run for the U.S. Senate if Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison tries for governor in 2010. And add Secretary of State Roger Williams to possible Senate hopefuls. "Certainly," Williams said. "I'm an athlete. I have my track shoes with me all the time."

Seems to me like Shapiro would have a tough time getting through a statewide primary. Staubach, on the other hand, would have a much better chance.

Meanwhile, Roger Williams is waiting in line, as are quite a few other people.

Posted by Evan @ 05/10/07 07:03 AM | Comments (1)

09 May 2007

Vaunted and venerated only by its enemies

Given some of the editorialized reporting that you see out of the LATimes, it's nice to know they have one intriguing voice from the Right in Jonah Goldberg. His column today is pretty effective:

That's the upshot of an alternately brilliant and tendentious cover story in the latest New Republic, in which Jonathan Chait argues that the so-called netroots "are the most significant mass movement in U.S. politics since the rise of the Christian right." Chait persuasively argues that the netroots — Democratic activist blogs and other online communities — are transforming the Democratic Party by championing a new emphasis on partisan fervor and political unity.

That was the thesis of Kos' and Armstrong's tendentiously boring book.

Back to Goldberg:

The conservative infrastructure that arouses so much envy among liberals today was an afterthought. It was created because the far more valuable real estate — universities, foundations, newspapers and TV networks — were held by liberals. Conservatives used their institutions to have serious arguments about what conservatives should believe.

The netroots crowd seems mostly determined to skip the serious argument part and to settle on the idea that liberals should simply all believe the same thing, first and foremost on the Iraq war. And as important as Iraq is right now, it is hardly a serious substitute for the intellectual catalyst of World War II and the Cold War. Netrooters may have a terrible shock in store for them when the war is over and their reason for existence is too.

If conservatism were nothing more than a noise machine, that would be a shame. (I don't buy it.) But even if the netrooters are right, what exactly has that noise machine bought? Not that much. Ronald Reagan won the presidency without benefit of Rush Limbaugh or Fox News, and Newt Gingrich took back Congress two years before Fox News was even launched. Folks like Limbaugh helped. But surely that had something to do with the substance of what Limbaugh had to say and not just his ability to say it. If merely having a radio show is all it takes, Al Franken would be a hugely successful radio host today. He isn't.

This thought isn't particularly unique to Goldberg, but he synthesizes it well.

Hat tip to Kevin's sidebar link blog.

Posted by Evan @ 05/09/07 04:14 PM | Comments (0)

Perry Alliance Straw Poll

The Perry Alliance announced the winner of its online straw poll the other day. The winner? Fred Thompson with 36.3%. Rudy Giuliani was a distant second with 21%, and McCain was in third had 8.5%.

Full results here.

Posted by Evan @ 05/09/07 03:24 PM | Comments (0)

07 May 2007

Simplistic

Perry Bacon, Jr., compares Fred to McCain in the Washington Post:

Fred Thompson fervently backed the Iraq war, railed against an expanding federal government, took stands that occasionally annoyed his party and rarely spoke about his views on social issues during his tenure as a senator from Tennessee or in his writings and speeches since leaving office.

In short, the man some in the GOP are touting as a dream candidate has often sounded like the presidential hopeful many of them seem ready to dismiss: Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).

A relatively superficial analysis, seems to me. McCain and Thompson are good friends; in fact, that was the reason I originally didn't think Fred would run.

But a simple issue analysis doesn't reflect personality or how they would likely lead as president.

Posted by Evan @ 05/07/07 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Anti-war trial lawyer guy

The trial lawyer guy who wants to run against Cornyn got himself a Selby profile in the Statesman.

"I am incredibly worried about this war," Watts said last week. "I have no faith that John Cornyn is going to take one step to bring our men and women home."

Fascinating message, that one.

Posted by Evan @ 05/07/07 11:46 PM | Comments (1)

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