Shaun Kenney

Can’t eliminate departments, only lets you cut up to 20%, doesn’t allow you to cut taxes, and grossly oversimplifies the process? Thank the Richmond Times-Dispatch for the worst example of a budget cutting scenario I’ve ever seen!

Actually it’s not that bad. Feel free to goof around yourself. But don’t get your hopes up… some folks still think government is the solution, though if you look at this with an eye towards reducing spending it’s quick to see how you could create a $2 billion stimulus package for Virginia just by cutting taxes and reducing spending…

UPDATE: Norm Leahy over at Tertium Quids had the same opinion of this as I did:

It asks what services you would cut or what taxes you might raise to dig the state out of its fiscal hole. The cuts only go as high as ten percent (there is no “eliminate” function) while the taxes section mentions none of the fees legislators love to tweak during good times and bad.

I managed to run a huge surplus without raise taxes. I wasn’t allowed to cut taxes, so the model wouldn’t let me refund the balance to the taxpayers. A pity, really, because that’s the only fair way to handle a surplus.

Exactly.

I’m a big fan of campaign ads that hit hard and are memorable.  Who isn’t?

This one was forwarded to me by a friend, and frankly… I like it:

Now you could be someone who thinks this goes WAY over the line.

Is that so?

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…but something’s not sizing up here:

That won’t be enough to significantly reduce the unemployment rate, now 10 percent. In fact, most analysts expect the rate to keep rising for months and to remain close to 10 percent through year's end.

To drive down the jobless rate by just 1 percentage point this year, the economy would have to grow by 5 percent for the whole year. No one thinks that will happen.

So in order to wipe out unemployment, the nation’s GDP would have to increase by a rate of 50%?  Give the fact that real unemployment is probably closer to 17%, this doesn’t exactly offer courage that the current recovery is anything but another binge on credit.

If you want to run an economy, read Hayek.  If you want to salvage one, read Keynes… so goes popular theory.

Dana over at The Ruby Chronicles offers some cogent advice to those sympathetic to the tea party movement:

(L)et’s not forget that the tea parties started in revolt of BOTH parties and their excessive tax and spend policies, specifically TARP, which was put into action during a Republican administration. It was followed up by the first stimulus package, which was under a Democratic administration. The GOP are no friends of tea party patriots. Now that we have Democrats as a super majority, people are fawning over what they think the GOP can do for them. All I’m saying is BEWARE.

…beware not just the parties.  Beware the organizations, candidates, and everyone else looking to cash in on your enthusiasm.

The best inoculation against such infiltration?  Get involved politically — and that means finding your local GOP unit, making your voice heard, take it over and run principled conservatives.  You’re not sacrificing principles in doing so — you’re practicing them.

No class

And the teabagging, bipartisan response in front of an all GOP audience is over. Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell had a “black woman”, “asian guy”, and “military guy” behind him. The seating chart for this thing must have been six months in the making.

Of course, the ironic thing is Kos may have gotten it right:  the “black woman” is Lisa Hick-Thomas (Virginia Secretary of Administration), the “asian guy” is Jim Gheng (Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade), the “military guy” is Staff Sgt. Robert Tenpenny (served with McDonnell’s daughter in Iraq), and the other “white woman” is Janet Polarek (Virginia Secretary of the Commonwealth — and a long time aide to McDonnell).

The ironic thing is, this is a key part of McDonnell’s inner circle — trusted aides, friends, allies.  Liberal racism at its finest.

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First, I want to give folks a heads up on a three-week project I”m working on.  It’ll be an insight as to what I’m learning as a newly-minted supervisor in Fluvanna County, Virginia and what the process entails, how the major players interact, and what problems localities face from both a general perspective and how those issues play out in Fluvanna itself.  For those in Virginia you’ll get one man’s perspective, and for those inside Fluvanna you’ll get my first impressions of county government. A preview of the topics so far:

Reflections of a Supervisor-Elect:

(1)  Preview
(2)  Staff Orientation
(3)  County Budgets and the Economic Crisis
(4)  Constitutional Offices
(5)  The Perks of an Elected Official in Virginia
(6)  Communication, Social Media, and Transparency
(7)  Town of Columbia
(8)  Politicizing the Budget Process

I’ll be honest — I’m nearly encouraged to podcast this series (and may do so if readers think the experiment is worthwhile).  I’ll be posting and regularly updating as the dates get closer to my first meeting on 06 January 2010.  In the meantime, I’d like to introduce you to a stack of my closest friends since my staff orientation in mid-November:

This is the massive stack of policies, law, procedures, introductory materials, the comprehensive plan, audits, budgets and departmental material a new supervisor is issued.  I’ll admit, it’s all tremendously informative.  This is the side of government that most bloggers (and reporters for that matter) crawl through the trenches to get their hands upon.  It’s the information that pejoratively is offered the epithet “byzantine” along with a series of other choice words.

I’ll give you first impressions, because for all the strum und drang local government appears to be, it’s not glass-half-empty.  It’s simply a lot of work, and a lot of folks carry the load together.

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The Wall Street Journal (and just about everyone else) is either aghast, in denial, or playing a game of see-I-told-you-so on global warming cooling climate change.

We don’t doubt that Mr. Jones would have phrased his emails differently if he expected them to end up in the newspaper. His May 2008 email to Mr. Mann regarding the U.N.’s Fourth Assessment Report: “Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?” does not “read well,” it’s true. (Mr. Mann has said he didn’t delete any such emails.)

But the furor over these documents is not about tone, colloquialisms or even whether climatologists are nice people in private. The real issue is what the messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on global warming was arrived at in the first place, and how even now a single view is being enforced. In short, the impression left by the correspondence among Messrs. Mann and Jones and others is that the climate-tracking game has been rigged from the start.

Thus ends the debate for the moment, but it still doesn’t end several aspects of the argument. CO2 in the atmosphere is still off the chart, for instance. Other nations or corporations maybe very well take a turn towards environmental laxity. Scientific iconoclasm may very well be the reaction of the public… and for good reason.

While the scientific community now reignites the debate, the only good news is a return of empiricism over ideology.  Good to remember, especially when there are so many out there depending on justifications — legitimate or otherwise — to push for change.

Yes, I give you Earth… with rings like Saturn and a beautiful rendition of Ave Maria to boot!

For those of you who do not know already, last Tuesday, November 03rd I won in a general election for county supervisor here in Fluvanna County by a 3.5% margin.  It was a tremendous win, backed by some of the most wonderful human beings and supporters a candidate could ask for.

The difference now is shifting gears from mere commentator and blogger to a blogging elected official.

As such, stay tuned for some changes here at SK.com.  Yes, there will be a redesign, and hopefully an effort to make local government a bit more transparent and open.  More than this, the personal touch doesn’t go away… so it’ll be all the commentary I’ve been known to offer plus a heavy dose of Fluvanna County’s comings and goings.

What’s the goal?  I want to be able to offer an idea of what local elected officials can do for their community online.  There are a host of excellent resources for local officials to keep in touch with their constituencies.  Better than this, social media provides an excellent avenue for others to access their representatives.

If social media really is all about connectivity, openness, and transparency, I’m going to give it my best shot.  Stay tuned!

As a public service to you, the reader:

GO VOTE NOVEMBER 3rd!!!