If you are an elected official, and you have to make a choice between raising taxes on your constituents or cutting the number of government employees and their salaries, what would you do? For most of the last few decades, in most places, the politicians would just raise taxes. Now that is changing, and here is why. In recent weeks, what used to be a rare event is becoming commonplace, and that is public employees losing their jobs or having their wages and benefits cut. Government employees are rioting in Greece (as if that does any good when the cupboard is bare) because many of them are losing their jobs. Greece, Spain, Portugal and even the Cayman Islands have announced they will be cutting public-employee wages and benefits. Many state and local governments in the United States are doing the same thing. As most of the world's governments head toward a Greek-style meltdown, taxpayers increasingly realize that if government spending is growing faster than the economy, there is no way that tax increases can solve the problem - and most countries have about reached the limit of how much more tax revenue they are going to be able to coerce and extort from their citizens.

The city councils in Los Angeles and San Diego passed resolutions calling for a boycott of Arizona.  Both are discovering their politically correct gesture is not without cost. Arizona Corporation Commissioner Gary Pierce reminded LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa that his city receives 25 percent of its electricity from power plants in Arizona. "I am confident that Arizona's utilities would be happy to take those electrons off your hands," Mr. Pierce wrote. San Diego depends heavily on the tourist industry, but the recession has hit it hard.  Typically, about two million Arizonans visit San Diego each year, so when the city council spit in their face, tourism officials were concerned. "I've been approached by a number of hotels who are very concerned because they've received cancellations from Arizona guests," the executive director of the county hotel-motel association told the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Mr. Kevin W. Toomy President and Chief Operating Officer Ruth's Chris Steak House Re:  An incident of which you should be aware.   Dear Mr. Toomy, As you are reading this, so are tens of thousands of people on the Internet. This past Monday evening, May 10th, with my wife at a dinner business meeting I decided to treat myself to a steak at Ruth's Chris - which I consider the best steak in America this side of Peter Luger's in Brooklyn. I arrived at the Ruth's Chris in Tyson's Corner, Virginia (8521 Leesburg Pike), a little after nine.  My server was a very nice and competent lady named Shannon.  As it was late, the place was fairly empty:  two fellows in a booth across from me, a quartet at a table to my left, another group to my right, and a third group that I could hear but not see. Shannon took my order and soon afterwards, both the group on my right and left departed.  Only the group that I couldn't see (plus the two fellows in the booth) were left and now that the other folks had gone, I noticed how loud they were.  Really loud.  As I listened, the language they were speaking was unmistakable.  It was Arabic.

Need another example of what's at stake in November?  How about your 401(k) retirement savings?  Via something called the Employee Benefits Security Administration, a group of fascisti within the Labor Department, the Dems are planning to seize your and everyone else's savings a lá Argentina to fund public union worker pensions.  The way to prevent this is a Republican majority in the 112th Congress.  If the Dems keep their majority, you will see millions of folks pulling all their money out of their 401(k)s, taking the penalty haircut, and putting it where government goons can't steal it. All those millions need to remember this in November. *** Now, how about something that will really tick you off?  This week, plans were announced to build a gigantic 13-story Moslem mosque near Ground Zero, the site of Islam's 9/11 attack on America. Note it will be called "the Cordoba House."  What a telegraphic punch.  Cordoba was the capital of the Islamic Emirate of Al-Andalus (Andalusia) in Spain, seized by Moslem invaders from Africa in 711 and recaptured by Spanish Christians under Ferdinand III of Castille in 1236.  What better indication could there be of the Islamic intent to make America a Moslem Al-Andalus Emirate?

The first casualty of voter dissatisfaction with business as usual in Washington is a (more or less) conservative Republican senator from Utah. Robert Bennett, 76, was denied the opportunity to run for a fourth term when he garnered only 27 percent of the vote from delegates to the state GOP convention Saturday (5/8). Under Utah's rules, a candidate must get at least 40 percent of the delegate vote to be eligible to run in the state's primary. "This is a damn outrage," said David Brooks, a "conservative" columnist for the New York Times. "It's almost a nonviolent coup," agreed E. J. Dionne, a liberal columnist for the Washington Post.  "The long promised purge is on," wrote Kathleen Parker, a "conservative" columnist for the Post. The same day Utah Republicans rejected Mr. Bennett, Utah Democrats forced their only Member of Congress, Rep. Scott Matheson, into a primary.  Liberals were upset with Mr. Matheson because he voted against Obamacare and carbon taxes. No journalists described what happened to Mr. Matheson as "a damn outrage," a "coup," or a "purge." The media double standard in which primary battles among Republicans are described as "civil wars" reflecting extremism and intolerance, but primary battles among Democrats are not has reached ludicrous proportions in Florida...

MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer is bummed the man who put a car bomb in Times Square isn't a right-winger with white skin. "There was part of me that was hoping that this was not going to be anybody with ties to any kind of Islamic country because there are a lot of people who want to use this terrorist intent to justify writing off people who believe in a certain way or who come from certain countries or whose skin color is a certain way," she said on a radio show Tuesday (5/04). Presumably, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg also was bummed to learn the bomber was Faisal Shahzad, 30, a naturalized citizen of Pakistani extraction who is a registered Democrat in Connecticut. On Monday (5/03), Mr. Bloomberg had told Katie Couric of CBS he thought the bomber was "homegrown, maybe a mentally deranged person or someone with a political agenda who doesn't like the health care bill or something." When he learned the truth, Mayor Bloomberg did not apologize for his smear of people who don't like Obamacare.  Instead, he smeared the people of New York City.