RedState Morning Briefing For March 9, 2011

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We Got Caps

We have RedState caps. We sure do. I’ve got some at the house now and they are good looking caps.The caps come in, naturally, red, but also in khaki, and black.They actually are good quality caps and the RedState logo makes them look sharp.

1. Reid: NEA Saving Lives via Cowboy Poetry

2. Now is the Time to Pass an ANWR Bill

3. Military Intervention In Libya Is A Bad Idea

4. The Monsters of McMinnville, Oregon: Radical teachers’ union gets MEAn

5. Open Secrets, Closed Eyes

1. Reid: NEA Saving Lives via Cowboy Poetry

When it comes to cutting budgets, everything is on the table with the Democratic leadership of the Senate. Absolutely everything, everything, up to and including cowboy poetry festivals.Or maybe not.Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. Now is the Time to Pass an ANWR Bill

In 1995, the Republican-controlled House and Senate passed a balanced budget act, which contained a provision to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil drilling and exploration. On December 6th of that year, President Bill Clinton vetoed the bill, ensuring that not a drop of oil would be extracted from the barren land of this 20 million acre area. We have literally been paying for this veto for the past 15 years.This gargantuan frozen tundra in the northeast corner of Alaska contains the most oil of any single untapped source within the borders of the U.S. According to the mean average estimate of the U.S. Geological Survey, there are at least 10.3 billion barrels of oil in ANWR. Most of this oil can be tapped through a drilling imprint of just 2,000 acres, or .01%, of the reserve area. In addition, there is an estimated 35 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in ANWR. Only an insidious gang of politicians hell-bent on undermining our national security, economic prosperity, and free market capitalism, could be so intransigent to impound this treasure from the American people.Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. Military Intervention In Libya Is A Bad Idea

One of the immutable laws of politics is that the Democrat party will refuse to use military intervention in any location where the US has strategic geopolitical or trade interests. The corollary to that law is that there is no Third World craphole (see Somalia, Darfur, Haiti) to which the Democrats will not offer to send US troops so long as it is high risk and with no real purpose.One must understand both these rules to comprehend the calls coming from the left demanding US intervention in Libya.Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. The Monsters of McMinnville, Oregon: Radical teachers’ union gets MEAn

In a sleepy little suburb outside of Portland, Oregon, there is a monster lurking in the classroom, teaching schoolchildren their three Rs—Reading, Radicalism & Reprisal. The monster is known as the McMinnville Education Association [MEA].McMinnville School District is in negotiations with the MEA (hereafter to be known as MEAn) and has been since last year (with the occasional help of a mediator), with the parties being millions apart. However, according to local press reports, with a state school budget crisis, while some progress has been made, so far an agreement has been elusive.Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. Open Secrets, Closed Eyes

I have tended to be a big fan of Open Secrets, a website by a lefty group that shows how money is spent in politics. The nice thing is that they provide data. And the nice thing about data is that it gives you good apples-to-apples comparisons. Based on data, you can argue things like “the largest donors and lobbyists in Wisconsin are the teachers unions” and have something to back that up with.So I was really disappointed to read this recent piece by Michael Beckel at Open Secrets entitled “Union Muscle Eclipsed by High-Profile Conservative Groups During 2010 Election”. They reviewed the publicly disclosed spending information and concluded that the unions spent less money than American Crossroads, the Chamber, et al. in the 2010 cycle. In particular, they found that the unions spent $46.7m while business groups spent $97m or so.There’s a catch though. AFSCME, the largest of the public employee unions, told the New York Times that they spent $91m. Please click here for the rest of the post.