In Utah, the state legislature is currently considering some interesting issues.  One is the aspect of how to spend the state's surplus.  As the Force is strong in Star Wars, the Education Lobby is strong in the legislature.  The nominally Republican governor, multimillionaire Jon Huntsman, wants to put the surplus to work in the schools.

Notice my terminology "put the surplus to work".  Although those are my words, they are fitting.  The alternative being presented is cutting taxes or putting the money into education.    This is a fool's choice.  If the schools need money there can be a multidimensional approach to the problem that has nothing to do with the alternative of giving back money seized by the government.  Here are a few:

1.  Find other programs to cut to put money in the schools.
2.  If Education is so desperate find outside funding avenues to fund schools.  There are vast tracts of land in Utah dedicated to education funding. Make those properties more productive.
3.  Here's a heretical thought... Re-engineer the education system to be more efficient.  Like by putting more money in the classroom and firing a few thousand parasitic administrators.  By not changing curriculum so often so that books can be re-used.
4.  Put current state funds directly into the classroom rather than into a general school district fund.

A friend of ours recently retired as a middle school teacher.  She had to shell out a few hundred bucks a year of her own money to make her programs work.  This is common in Utah education, where the school districts put so few dollars into the classroom.

The problem with Big Government Republicans like Gov. Huntsman is that the solution is not to become more efficient but to spend more outside money.  That idea doesn't go too far in the American household that wants to stay out of debt.  What do they do?  They make do.  They find ways to economize.  They don't buy more than the can afford.

Another example of that is the Salt Lake Light Rail transit system.  When this system was pushed on the public in the early 90's it was under the guise of no additional taxpayer funding.  In fact when it went to a vote it was turned down.  The sophists in government argued that the voters were misinformed and ignored the result.

In the last election, the voters flagellated themselves by passing an additional 1/4 cent sales to tax highways and transit.  Guess who will be getting the lion's share of that?  You guessed right.  Light Rail.   ... and every rider is highly subsidized and those who don't use light rail get to spend a few hundred bucks a year payring for those who do. 

True conservatism doesn't exist in the halls of Utah state government, it doesn't exist in any numbers on the national level and in the rest of the states.  Legislators and governors look first to the taxpayer to pay for new programs and could care less about cutting current ones.  It's easier to promise things paid by others than to promise to take things away.

My wife came up with an interesting comment this morning...  Why don't the Iraqis have any responsibility for the state of the war in their country?  You know, she has a point.  Those on the left blame G.W. Bush of every little thing that goes wrong.  Even those on the pull-out-now side blame Bush for putting us in this mess.

Why don't we place a huge chunk of the blame on the Iraqis?  In our own incredibly self-centered way, we blame ourselves for anything that goes wrong.  Katrina? Bush's fault.  Oil consumption?  Cheney's fault.  The poor (?) economy?  Bush's fault.  Global warming?  The Republicans.  Why doesn't anyone realize that there are forces outside of our control at work, here.

Katrina?  That was, truly, an act of God.  The levees had held for decades.  The clean up was incredibly monumental.  No one can be fully prepared for a disaster of that size and scope.  Without the levee break-up and subsequent flooding, there would have been no weeks and weeks of cable news.  We wouldn't be hearing about Katrina as if it was a Republican plan to displace Blacks over and over.  Sure people could have done a better job. 

The Dems could have eradicated poverty in the 70's and 80's.  They didn't.  Poverty isn't the fault of  Congress or the President.  It is a natural result of millions of human beings living together.  There will always be unfortunate human beings that fall to the bottom.  There will always be a top and always be a bottom.  That is not to say we do not help them.  We must not be guilty because they are there and those of us higher up aren't. 

Oil consumption has gone up.  The amount of oil used for energy, could be less.  Is that Cheney's fault?  Market forces have found that oil is the cheapes form of energy.  Do you it costs pennies to remove a gallon of oil from the ground and pennies to have it refined?  Yet your $3.00 gallon of gas has many people taking inordinate profits from it... mostly from direct oil producers and the various governments.  The middle people are in a market environment where their profits are controlled by competition.  No Cheney plot.  Cheney's Halliburton was supplied the middle.  Where is the support to make ourselves energy independent.  Sure there are wild ideas about converting grass into gas, but where their is abundant oil, our politicians won't allow drilling (Offshore, ANWR and other places) 

One of the great mysteries of the early 21st century will be the fact the people thought the economy was in the tank.  By any measure, the economy is just fine.  It is a powerful, well-running machine.  It has endured catastrophe (Katrina's destruction of oil production and refining capabilities) and geo-political attack (9/11).  Why should we feel guilty about that?  Why should we lament about a bad economy?  Because 35% of the country wants a bad economy and they are those who hog the mainstream media and brainwash vast numbers of Americans to think differently.

Which brings us back to Iraq.  Whose fault is the sectarian violence?  Is it Bush's fault that the Sunnis hate the Shia?  No.  Is it Bush's fault that the Sunnis attached the Samarra mosque?  No.  Is it Bush's fault that Shia death sqauds pull Sunni children out of buses and execute them?  No. 

 It is Bush's fault that he tread much too lightly in the days immediately following the capture of Bagdad.  There absolutely should not have been looting to the level permitted.  There have certainly been many mistakes.   There have been mistakes made by the State Department (run mostly by the left) in applying Western cultural values to the Iraqis.

We cannot be held responsible for the sectarian violence.  We have had troops there to keep the sectarian warfare down.  There is not a civil war in Iraq, but there is extreme sectarian violence.  Perhaps calling it a sectarian war would be an applicable term.

What does that mean for our future in Iraq.  It means that we do not really have full support.  We are certainly liberators.  But the sectarian violence also shows that we are not occupiers, but feckless facilitators between two parties who do not care for facilitation.  In this the Iraqis are responsible for their continuing sectarian strife.  Had all three factions behaved as the Kurds in the north, our presence would have been reduced in Iraq long ago.  We alsdo forget that there are vast swaths of Iraq that are pacified and under Iraqi control.  It is Bagdad and Anbar province where Sunni/Shia strife is abundant.  

We do not have to burden ourselves with guilt over Iraq.  We did not fan the flames of sectarianism.  We tried to facilitate peace between them, when they were not interested.  If this recently-started surge is in any way successful, perhaps the willingness to think about peace may finally arrive.  Bush must have given Iraq Prime Minister al Maliki something think about, because we can now go after both halves of the violence.  That must have been placing responsiblily on the Iraqi government to get behind a real pacification campaign.  Let us hope it works for everyone's sake, Iraqi and American.

Just what should we think about people who scream "Death to America!"?  Should we believe their words?  Should we take their sentiments as fact?  Or should we just dismiss their invective as political mass hysteria?

There are hundreds if not thousands of mosques in the United States.  The majority of these mosques are getting money from similar sources that madrassas (muslim religious schools) receive...  from Saudi wahhabists.  What gets preached in these mosques?  For those immersed in fundamentalist Islam, it is, indeed, Death the America.

Jihadists, muslim fundamentalists, certain brands of Shiites, Hezbollah, Hamas all preach Death to America.  Their culture and their practice of religion supports it.  Yet where does the freedom to express one's religion end and sedition begin?  If there are chants of Death to America in a U.S. mosque, does that qualify as a seditious act?  If a muslim fundamentalist leader calls his flock to submit to Islam and then decries the US while supporting terrorist acts verbally... is that sedition?

Perhaps it is time for find out.  Perhaps it is time to start defining the law before we have a half million muslims running around in our country secretly pledging their lives to the destruction of the United States.  In these perilous times, it becomes necessary to draw these lines early, so any steps taken to defend ourselves are not totally a result of a reaction to another massive terrorist attack. 

No one wants concentration camps in the U.S. again.  However there could be substantial support for deportation and exile of those who would actively do us damage.  Perhaps it is time to institute the concept of exile of U.S. citizens.  No jail, just expulsion from our country. 

In order to do that, the definition of sedition must be clear.  The support of terrorist groups, the support of the notion of "Death to America" should be enough.  The body evacuates waste products that would do it harm.  Perhaps it is time for us to do the same.  Not jail, exile.   Sedition should not trump freedom of religion if the personal exercise of that religion is an active war against our nation.

With the proclamation of a national holiday disguised as a day of mourning for President Ford, our President continues to participate with Congress in complete and utter disregard for the citizenry of the country.  Given the fact that the Bush Tax Cut helped business as well as taxpayers, one continues to see the effects of our Big Government President.

Some of the effects of the day off for President Ford's funeral:
1.  No mail, as though 4 days of mail will do people waiting for checks, etc. in the mail any harm.
2.  Vacation days not having to be taken for thousands of government workers at a cost of billions of dollars.
3.  Time off taken, involuntarily, by bank employees, stock brokers and support personnel, etc. etc. that will not be reimbursed by the government, but imposed upon large swaths of the population.

Why was it necessary to stop the wheels of government.  They couldn't attend the funeral.  This hasn't been done before.  It was very costly.  No one will bicker with flying the Ford family all over the place or putting up the bill for a large state funeral... ex-presidents deserve that.

However stopping government and proclaiming a holiday makes President Bush continue to look like a President who doesn't care about the taxpayer's money.  It's there to spend, as far as he is concerned.

Regrettable.