Idiocy

Keith Olbermann's current segment discussing Jan Brewer's Arizona "death panels" that are denying life-saving transplants for about 100 people is reminding me of something that the odious Chris Christie, my unfortunate governor, notoriously did a few months back. Christie, that stalwart of small government and fiscal rectitude, shut down a project to build an additional tunnel under the Hudson river. Sure, it was already at approximately the "let's build the thing!" stage, and millions of dollars had already been spent on planning, and it was such a massively good idea to build it, but it would cost money, so nope, we couldn't do that. Oh, wait. The federal government was giving New Jersey more money for that tunnel than the state was spending on it. And when Christie canceled the project, the federal government took its money back, thank you kindly. So the decision not to build that tunnel... increased the New Jersey budget deficit. Likewise, the health care coverage in Arizona that Jan Brewer has cut was being funded more than 1:1 by the feds, so cutting it has increased Arizona' deficit.

This is not fiscal conservativism. This is just stupidity, or perhaps malice.