DrewM. linked this briefly in his DOD cuts post, but he suggests that maybe it's important for a stand-alone post. He's right.

The upside? This affects only Obama voters, pretty much. The cost is borne by them. (It's the right thing to do, too, but let's just talk political effect.)

It is a truism that the taxpayer is always up for increasing someone else's taxes. It stands to reason, then, they'd also be game to cut someone else's pay, right?

This is straight from Obama's playbook -- when a cost is to be imposed, only impose it on those who vote against you.

As Alinksy said, make them live up to their own rulebook.

Okay, that's not really exactly on-target but close enough.

Whenever a conservative suggests reducing the federal deficit by cutting spending rather than raising taxes, there's always someone to ask: Well, what would you cut? Americans may say they want less government spending, the argument goes, but they don't want anyone to touch their services and subsidies and monthly checks.

Fair enough. But there's a persuasive counter-argument going around in conservative circles these days: You can start cutting government spending without cutting anyone's services or subsidies or monthly checks. Just bring the pay of federal workers into line with pay in the private sector.

A recent Heritage Foundation study found the average federal worker (excluding the uniformed military) makes $78,901 a year in wages and salary versus $50,111 for the average private sector worker. When you count generous health and pension benefits, the average total compensation of federal workers comes to $111,015 a year versus $60,078 in the private sector.

In recent years, that disparity has been fueled by an explosion of federal generosity on the high end of the pay scale....

If Congress were to freeze federal pay raises until the private sector begins to catch up, the savings to taxpayers would be considerable. Heritage scholar James Sherk estimates that ending the disparity could save the taxpayers $47 billion a year. (A study by the American Enterprise Institute put the figure at $40 billion.) That won't get close to balancing the budget, but add up 10 years of that and the government will save significant money.

Indeed. And it's very nearly cost-free, as far as political damage.

There's no need to claim this is a panacea; it's not. It barely gets us there. But it is a step in the right direction.

We do have to cut actual muscle. But before we cut the muscle we need to cut the fat. And this is all fat.

Posted by: Ace at 07:36 AM | Comments (110)
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You can say a lot of things about Robert Gates but you can't say he's just riding out his time at the Department of Defense.

Most of the cuts he's proposing here involve civilian workers, contract positions and Flag Officers and their staffs.

Gates said he will recommend that President Obama dismantle the U.S. Joint Forces Command, which employs about 2,800 military and civilian personnel as well as 3,300 contractors, most of them in southeastern Virginia. He also said he will terminate two other Pentagon agencies, impose a 10 percent cut in intelligence advisory contracts and slim down what he called a "top-heavy hierarchy" by thinning the ranks of admirals and generals by at least 50 positions.

The reduction in funding for contract employees -- by 10 percent annually over three years -- excludes those in war zones.

Although the moves will save an unspecified amount of money, defense officials characterized them as a political preemptive strike to fend off growing sentiment elsewhere in Washington to tackle the federal government's soaring deficits by making deep cuts in military spending. The Obama administration has exempted national security from its budget reductions, but Gates said he fears that Congress might not be able to resist for long.

"It is important that we not repeat the mistakes of the past, where tough economic times or the winding down of a military campaign leads to steep and unwise reductions in defense," Gates said. He cited threats from Iran, North Korea and other countries -- in an implicit reference to China -- as justification for continued overall growth in the Pentagon's budget.

With deficits soaring and combat operations officially over in Iraq, it's inevitable that there will be a draw down in costs and infrastructure dedicated to supporting that fight. If history teaches us anything, it's that politicians will cut way too much and usually in the wrong places (F-22 anyone?). If Gates can get ahead of that curve and cut lower priority items to spare the essentials, all the better.

The big ticket item in this package is the Joint Forces Command. Now whether Gates really wants to shutter it or is using it as a chip for something else, isn't clear (though I bet he's serious). These games are played on a lot of levels.

Assume for the moment Gates really wants to close up the shop, is that a good or bad thing? Obviously, there's no easy answer and it depends on who you talk to. CDR Salamander, who has been advocating for a culling of the bloat at the flag level for awhile, seems to think we can survive very nicely without it. Lawmakers who are concerned mostly about jobs in their districts will sing a very different tune.

(Added) Lex has a few kind words to say in favor of contractors vs. full time civilian employees.

An interesting note somewhat lost in all of this...

He also promised to conduct a "zero-base review" of all defense intelligence programs, meaning an examination of each and every program and its budget. James Clapper, who is moving over to ODNI from the Pentagon, will conduct a similar review of all federal intelligence programs in order to find waste and redundancy, Gates said.

I wish all of the federal government should be doing this. Justify your existence from scratch, not just because "we've always done this".

Overall this seems like a good thing. Even the most hardcore hawk will admit there's more than a few places the DoD could slim down without hurting the mission. Though as always, the Devil is in the execution.

Now, if we can only get the rest of the government to follow DoD's example. One place that should be easy to cut back (were it not for public employee unions) is the explosion in federal salaries. Right now the average total federal compensation package is closing in on doubling the average in the private sector.

But there's no doubt that federal pay is higher than private pay across the board, not just in the upper brackets. If Congress were to freeze federal pay raises until the private sector begins to catch up, the savings to taxpayers would be considerable. Heritage scholar James Sherk estimates that ending the disparity could save the taxpayers $47 billion a year. (A study by the American Enterprise Institute put the figure at $40 billion.) That won't get close to balancing the budget, but add up 10 years of that and the government will save significant money.

And it's done without cutting government services or subsidies. "In the past, the implication was that if you are spending less, then you are doing less," says Grover Norquist, the conservative head of Americans for Tax Reform. "But you could save money by paying public workers what you pay private workers and still do the same things."

Is federal pay the big ticket budget item that entitlements are? Of course not but if you can't cut the low hanging fruit (economically and politically) you have zero chance of doing the hard stuff.

This seems like the kind of thing Republicans could run like crazy on.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:24 AM | Comments (66)
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A bit of an update, from "Breaking News" on Twitter:

Update on Alaska plane crash: Five believed dead, officials tell AP; nine were on board, NBC reports

Also, found this on a liberal's feed--

On December 4, 1978, the crash of a Learjet 25C at Anchorage Airport killed 5people.Ted Stevens survived;his wife Ann, did not. - weird??!!!

Posted by: Ace at 06:54 AM | Comments (63)
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This is the second week where the GOP is back ahead after two back-to-back oddball polls -- maybe both bad samples -- that showed the Democrats surging ahead after months of being behind.

Once again, this is a poll of registered voters; expect a poll of likely voters to put the GOP ahead 2-3 or even 4 more points.

And, once again, this is almost unheard of. When the GOP crushes the Democrats, they tend to have smaller leads (or in fact just be tied in this Democratic-skewing poll).

To have the GOP out front, and comfortably, presages bad trouble for the Party of Obama.

Posted by: Ace at 06:50 AM | Comments (29)
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If you watched TV in the 80s, you'll giggle at the credit sequence here.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 06:33 AM | Comments (41)
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So frazzled he doesn't know his enemies from his friends.

During an interview with The Hill in his West Wing office, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted liberal naysayers, whom he said would never regard anything the president did as good enough.

“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”

The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”

Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, Gibbs said: “They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”

I'm surprised he lasted this long. After his hilarious "Baghdad Gibbs" start, he settled mainly for answering press questions with variations of "I'll have to look into that" and "I left that information in my other pants."

Seems kinda pissy now, though. And after Nancy "Who is this Gibbs fellow?" Pelosi just forced him to recant his prediction that the GOP would take the House, too.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:43 AM | Comments (112)
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Blackstar Warrior.

He could have taken the whole galaxy -- but The Man wouldn't let him.

Presented in widescreen. more...

Posted by: Ace at 05:25 AM | Comments (32)
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Honestly, I'm down like the economy.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:05 AM | Comments (70)
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The left tried to make a lot of this video confrontation.

Since she didn't make any obvious gaffes, they invented one -- she "rolled her eyes," or something, when dude claimed she was a teacher.

The LSM has now decided to use this brief encounter for another one of their spin operations. They claim I – wait for it – “appear to roll my eyes” when the lady tells me she’s a teacher. Yes, it’s come to this: the media is now trying to turn my eyebrow movements into story lines. (Maybe that’s why Botox is all the rage – if you can’t move your eyebrows, your “eye rolling” can’t be misinterpreted!) If they had checked their facts first, they would have known that I come from a family of teachers; my grandparents were teachers, my father was a teacher, my brother is a teacher, my sister works in Special Needs classrooms, my aunt is a school nurse, my mom worked as a school secretary for much of her professional life, we all volunteer in classrooms, etc., etc., etc. Given that family history, how likely is it that I would “roll my eyes” at someone telling me that they too work in that honorable profession? Stay classy, LSM.

Well, maybe an eye roll would have been warranted. Or not; more checking has to be done.

Gateway Pundit is saying she's a singer in a "drag queen band," but that doesn't make a lot of sense, since she's a woman.

Actually, she seems to be a director for a local performance of "Hedwig and the Angry Itch," some kind of play/performance hybrid (whatever) about an attempted transsexual who virtually emasculated himself. (Hence -- the angry inch. Yeah, I know; not a nice image.)

At any rate, I don't think this proves the woman isn't a teacher -- a "theater tech" for some kind of very local production in the small town of Homer, Alaska for an outre one-man caberet/glam rock mish-mash which will probably collect ten or twelve customers a night is probably not a paying gig.

It's probably volunteer, or has some kind of nominal compensation. She gets paid in popcorn or something. (She's in the business of snacking, and business is good.)

So this woman probably has a day job, and until it can be proven otherwise, I'm guessing the day job is "teacher."

Thanks to Dr. Spank, but I think this one might be a misfire.

D'Oh! I didn't read Gateway Pundit all the way through once I thought I caught an error.

Gateway Pundit is saying the woman does work at a high school, but as a "theater tech," which is not, he points out, a teacher.

Oh, okay, I guess that's sort of right, but one can understand that the woman might claim otherwise, since she teaches people how to work the lightboard and otherwise prepares them to be stone-cold nerds in college.

(Sorry Man of Substance... not talking about real pros!)

Post Changed: I accidentally posted the Roman Polanski item meant for the sidebar here; to preserve the comments, I put up this post instead.

The Roman Polanski item is in the sidebar, now, where I intended it to be, but of course feel free to continue the discussion begun here.

Posted by: Ace at 07:25 PM | Comments (140)
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Welcome to the Monday.

Anniversary of the Nagasaki Bombing

65 years ago the US set off an atomic bomb 500 meters above Nagasaki. It was a plutonium-based implosion device which led to its spherical shape and nickname of 'Fat Man'.

Nagasaki doesn't get the same coverage as Hiroshima but it's more meaningful to me since it's the only nuked city I've ever visited. Today it's a completely modern city and other than the memorial around ground zero, you'd never know anything unusual ever happened there. You can read more of my thoughts on Nagasaki here.

Interestingly just 5 months later the US Marines held a football match at the site of the Nagasaki explosion - the Atom Bowl of 1946. Because of broken glass they used two hand touch instead of tackling. In retrospect it probably wasn't such a great idea to hold a game there but it also points out that these cities were hardly atomic wastelands at that point.

Here's some footage of 'Fat Man' being prepped and the actual explosion over Nagasaki along with appropriate eerie music.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:50 PM | Comments (496)
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