Fun With Dick & Jane

Today’s show was really fun. I had expected to interview Jay Fleitman who is running for the republican nomination for the 2nd Congressional District in Massachusetts, but I had the wrong week. So Joe and I just talked politics.

First we have a new theme song – Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5, which has absolutely no relevance to anything but is fun. Secondly I think I’ve got the podcast to 2 segments instead of 4. Let’s hope.

Joe and I talked Scott Brown, SOTU address, budget, debt, debt and more debt, the Virginia’s legislative victory (democrat) which makes it illegal to mandate health insurance (thus sticking a fork in any hope for resurrecting health care) NASA, Nancy Pelosi and affirmative action.

Meanwhile, I have a new project with some friends called YOU TOO CONGRESS which you can see here. We are pre-launch while we work out the bugs, but feel free to poke around. Congress gives itself a lot of perks on our dime and excludes itself from a lot of obligations. Our goal is to point those things out, which should lead to voting them out.

One can hope.

Dick and I talked about the MA budget and the 25% sales tax hike which passed last night bringing our taxes to 6.25%, one of the highest sales tax rates in the country.  We also talked about California’s pending bankruptcy and Barney Frank’s promise to bail out California with our money.   We also talked about MA “quasi public agencies” where we the taxpayers pay lots of people lots of money to do – well we don’t really know.

Dick commented that President Obama was “transparent” as he is constantly out there making speeches.  Visibility is not transparency in my book, and I encouraged Dick to watch the President’s left hand when his right hand is moving.

We talked a bit aboutthe abortion issue and how it isn’t an issue in MA, and hasn’t been an issue in MA for a decade at least, but nearly every democrat runs on that issue in order to scare people into voting for them.  My inner libertarian snuck out as I suggested that people could make any decision they want as long as the government doesn’t pay for it.

Now on a roll I proposed that we immediately replace the legislature with non-paid volunteers who work only when needed.  I also proposed that we immediately suspend all government programs except police and fire, and start again.  And I was only half kidding.

We had a good discussion about the information emerging about ACORN and particularly the latest revelation that the NY Times had information about illegal campaign activity between the Obama campaign and ACORN and refused to publish it, lest it be an “election changer.”  Dick wanted to know why I didn’t file a lawsuit.  When I explained that the government had to investigate that violation and specifically the attorney general who President Obama appointed Dick understood my frustration.

There is more, but you will have to listen.