The Arizona sheriff who said that local TV and radio hosts should do some “soul searching” after Saturday’s shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (in photo), D-Ariz., and others was blasted this morning by Arizona talk-show hosts. “I would say that his comments have incited stupidity around the world,” radio host Garret Lewis said. Another radio host, Jon Justice, said (without any hint of irony): “People need to go and point fingers. It’s unfortunate but some people do. They have to find somebody to demonize.” Meanwhile, Rebecca Mansour, an adviser to Sarah Palin, said it was “appalling” that some people have linked Palin’s campaign map with crosshairs on Giffords’ district to the shooting. She also claimed that the crosshairs were not meant to be an allusion to guns but were rather “surveyors symbols.”
Democratic states facing budget problems receive most of the media attention — including lectures about how they need to be more like red states such as Texas. But nearly all conservative states also are facing large shortfalls. Texas, for example, has a projected budget deficit next year of $10 billion, which is 22.3 percent of its current budget. That’s the seventh-highest percentage in the country, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. (Kansas’ budget shortfall of $550 million is about 9.5 percent of its budget.) “Why haven’t we heard more about Texas, one of the most important economies in America?” the website businessinsider.com asked. “Well, it’s because it doesn’t fit the script. It’s a pro-business, lean-spending, no-union state. You can’t fit it into a nice storyline, so it’s ignored.”
“We are leaving an era where to be a mayor, governor, senator or president was, on balance, to give things away to people,” wrote columnist Thomas Friedman. “And we are entering an era where to be a leader will mean, on balance, to take things away from people. It is the only way we’ll get our fiscal house in order before the market, brutally, does it for us.” What we need, Friedman contends, are leaders who “combine fiscal prudence with growth initiatives to make their cities, their states or our country great again.”
The Arizona sheriff who said that local TV and radio hosts should do some “soul searching” after Saturday’s shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (in photo), D-Ariz., and others was blasted this morning by Arizona talk-show hosts. “I would say that his comments have incited stupidity around the world,” radio host Garret Lewis said. Another radio host, Jon Justice, said (without any hint of irony): “People need to go and point fingers. It’s unfortunate but some people do. They have to find somebody to demonize.” Meanwhile, Rebecca Mansour, an adviser to Sarah Palin, said it was “appalling” that some people have linked Palin’s campaign map with crosshairs on Giffords’ district to the shooting. She also claimed that the crosshairs were not meant to be an allusion to guns but were rather “surveyors symbols.”
