…it would be that Right Turn on Red does NOT mean “it’s OK even if you have to peel out to jam yourself into a tiny space in the onrushing traffic.”
That’s mine for today…you got one?
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You hate to see a grown legislator cry
It’s not a pleasant sight, but we should get used to it because it’s not over: across the country, and soon in Washington, D.C., elected representatives are finally struggling with making actual budget cuts.
Here in Texas we face the same problem as everyone else: not enough money to pay for everything we want. Fact is, we’re $23 billion short of what we’d need to fund the last budget with no increases in anything—or in other words, we need to cut the last budget by more than 12%—and the Texas Constitution doesn’t permit deficit spending. So our legislature is in the midst of that “adult conversation” we’ve heard so much about, making tough decisions about what to keep and what to cut.
No one’s really in favor of cutting state funding of public education by $8 billion (or in favor of what Tom the Dancing Bug down there is imagining), or short-sheeting projected growth in Medicaid caseloads by $4 billion, or running 
the risk of nursing homes closing because of the proposed cut in Medicaid reimbursement rates. But all of that’s in the budget approved yesterday by the state House of Representatives, and that’s after getting the governor to agree to use $3.1 billion dollars from the savings account.
Republican leaders in the Texas House, who are still talking about finding some “non-tax revenue” source to ease the cuts, passed this budget because they believe the voters made it clear in November that they’re opposed to raising any taxes, and so far there’s been no groundswell of Texans begging to pay higher taxes to prevent these cuts…although there’s been plenty of complaints about what’s proposed to be cut.
Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, likened the situation to entering a burning house and finding schoolchildren in one room and elderly people in another.
“I finally figured out that I couldn’t save anybody in this fire,” Dutton said, asking why lawmakers chose not to put out the fire by addressing the state’s underlying fiscal problems.
The same kind of tough decisions need to be made in Washington, and just like in Texas there’s no way to make real change without pain—a lot if it. Most of the federal budget is tied up in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and defense spending. The deficit commission concluded that everything has to be on the table for discussion, and a small group of senators has been negotiating quietly to come up with a plan.
Tomorrow, House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin releases his plan, and I hope that kicks off some serious discussion about our options for resolving the government’s financial problem. I hope, but frankly I’m not overly optimistic about Congress solving the problem: you see, tomorrow another group of worthies meets at the White House to see if they can keep the government from shutting down on Friday, because Congress has repeatedly failed in its responsibility to pass a budget for the year that started October 1 of LAST YEAR!
C’mon, guys; cut the crap and get serious, wouldya?
This is what the Interwebs is all about: humor at the expense of others
And it’s never better than when the wound is self-inflicted, as is the case of these young women who (a) dressed themselves thusly, and (b) allowed a photographer in the room.
Check out the rest of the wedding collection here. Thanks to AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com.
And Sheila Jackson Lee believed Neil Armstrong planted the American flag on Mars
You probably know that the United States is mothballing its fleet of space shuttles, and taking proposals from museums and such that want to adopt the three remaining orbiters. The decision on where Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour will go is expected April 12th, the 30th anniversary of Columbia’s flight on STS-1.
Well, it seems that some faint whisper of this news has lately wafted in to the op/ed office at Houston’s Leading Information Source, which this morning boldly editorialized in favor of one of those ships ending up in Houston, the home of NASA’s Mission Control for human spaceflight, because, well, we’re Houston, dammit, and NASA should “do the right thing.”
The editorials in our little local publication have earned such a bad reputation over the years that I rarely bother to read them, and certainly not when they lead from the rear on pressing local issues. So hats off to the good folks at blogHOUSTON.net for catching the comment today from the guy who schooled the Chron on the major unforced fact errors in what they must surely have thought was a simple rah-rah for the home team.
“The Discovery, the orbiter that flew first and furthest”
Discovery is the oldest surviving space-capable orbiter, but it was not the first to fly. Enterprise was the first to fly in the atmosphere; Columbia was the first to fly in space.
When they get the easy stuff so wrong…
If you know anything, thank a reporter
Is it funny-strange that a blog that comments on reporting and journalism has a category for Woeful Journalism but not one to sing its praises, or is it just funny-sad that there hasn’t been a need to have one?
People who came to journalism post-Watergate and later, like I did, have a lot of complaints about the state of the art/profession/trade as it exists today; I suspect our elders have their own hit parade of infamies that we committed. But my complaint has never been about how the digital revolution is changing the way information is presented to the reader/listener/viewer/consumer/custo-mer, because to my mind the delivery method is a tertiary concern. The primary concern should be the content, with a little preserving-and-protecting-a-free-and-independent-press as a secondary.
I’m fine with electronic self-publication (duh!), and there’s not a damn thing wrong with everybody expressing their own beliefs and opinions. But I don’t ever confuse what I and thousands and thousands of other people do at our own private keyboards with what real, professional reporters do out in the world every day. Today I ran across two great examples of why that job is hard to do, and why it can be dangerous to do.
When the Earth quakes and the ocean covers the land and nuclear reactors split open, real reporters go to the danger because that’s where the story is. When a dictator sends his army against its own people to suppress their expression of a desire for freedom, real reporters go to the danger because that’s where the story is. Real reporters leave their comfortable homes and go where the news is happening, to observe real events and talk to real people, to report, so the rest of us can know what’s going on. The biggest risk we stay-at-home bloggers take is suffering a fragmented hard drive.
The next time you hear someone complain about the biased news media, remind them that it’s real reporters, working for all kinds of publications, who provide us all with the raw data that pundits and demagogues misconstrue to suit their own purposes, and that sometimes they risk their lives to do it. More times than you probably imagine, they lose their lives doing it. We owe them our thanks and our respect.
→UPDATE Mar. 21: Times reporters released by Libya
