California’s “Austere” State Budget?
 

     California-based reporter John Broder, who seemed quite pleased with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent turn to the left (or as the Times headline insisted, to the center) returns with a more detailed breakdown of the governor’s big-spending budget, “Schwarzenegger Budget Calls for Billions in New Spending.”

     Broder refers to California’s bloated multi-billion dollar state budget as “austere” and laments the recent “anemic growth in state revenues and spending,” a characterization that harkens to the liberal idea that the health of the state is dependent on a high level of taxing and spending.

     “Aided by a multibillion-dollar windfall in tax revenues, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a $125.6 billion election-year budget on Tuesday that would break from recent years of austerity and increase spending on education, health, prisons and public works without raising taxes….This is the third budget Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has proposed since winning office in a recall election in 2003. After several years of anemic growth in state revenues and spending, steady growth in the state economy in the past year is allowing the governor to promote new spending for education, social services and long-neglected infrastructure projects as he starts his re-election campaign.”

     By contrast, the Los Angeles Times offers a fiscally responsible view, taking into account the state’s terminal budget deficit and posing the question: “Analysts ask if the state will be able to afford the future costs.”

     The NYT’s Broder skips over the deficit question lightly: “Despite stronger-than-expected tax revenues, the governor's plan projects a significant imbalance between spending and income -- some $6 billion in the general fund alone. That deficit would be covered by excess tax funds collected this year that would carry into next year.”

For more Broder on Schwarzenegger, click here.

An NYT “Whistleblower” Unveiled
 

     Former National Security Agency official Russell Tice unveiled himself on ABC News last night as one of the sources for last month’s New York Times scoop on the National Security Agency’s terrorist surveillance program.

     Stephen Spruiell at National Review Online predicted something like this last week, asking: “If Tice turns out to be one of the NY Times' anonymous sources for its NSA stories, didn't the Times readers deserve to know that its information came from a potentially unbalanced ex-employee with an axe to grind?”

     Spruiell is referring to the fact that Tice lost his job after the NSA revoked his security clearances, citing psychological concerns.

     The Media Research Center’s Brent Baker followed Tice’s appearance on World News Tonight. Brian Ross asked Tice, “Are you concerned you could be prosecuted and sent to prison for talking to the New York Times and talking to us today?"

     Tice replied: "As far as I'm concerned, as long as I don't say anything that's classified, I'm not worried."

     Tice is also a member of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, which includes such august left-wingers as Daniel Ellsburg and Ray McGovern (hat tip The American Thinker). For whistleblowing balance,  Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer (of Able Danger fame) is also a member.

     McGovern, a former CIA analyst, spoke at a left-wing anti-war rally organized by Democrats in a Capitol Hill basement and, as reported by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post, claimed the “United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration 'neocons' so 'the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world.'”

Alito’s Princeton Group “Resisted the Admission of…Minorities”?
 

     White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller has some fun with the droning senators questioning Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito in Wednesday’s “But Enough About You, Judge; Let’s Hear What I Have to Say.”

     Bumiller calls Alito’s questioners “some of Capitol Hill’s windiest lions,” a characterization most viewers would no doubt agree with. But she also forwards this untrue statement regarding the nominee himself: “[Sen. Patrick] Leahy said, he was particularly troubled that Judge Alito would have joined the conservative college group, Concerned Alumni of Princeton University, which resisted the admission of women and members of minorities.”

     David Kirkpatrick made the same mistake November 16. The group in fact criticized preferential admission of racial minorities (which Princeton has practiced since 1963) not the admission of minorities itself.

To read the rest of Bumiller, click here.