Tony Bennett and Stevie Wonder – For Once in my Life
Does it get any better!?!?!
Artist: Tony Bennett and Stevie Wonder
Tune: For Once in My Life
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Stevie Wonder – As
It doesn’t get much better than Stevie Wonder. I’m back home safe and sound.
Artist: Stevie Wonder
Tune: As
A few things…Friday
I’m travelling again. Happy Anniversary to my wonderful wife!! If God is willing, and the airlines cooperate, I should be home tonight!!
- I’m sorry, I could care less about the Royal wedding. As far as I know, they aren’t putting any food on my table and aren’t paying any of my bills. Knowledge of the Royal wedding will not improve the job market or stop companies from shipping jobs overseas. Just like with all newlyweds, I wish them well.
- Let’s talk sports for a second – The Dallas Mavericks slid by the Portland Trailblazers. They figured out how to blow a 17-point lead, only to hold on for dear life in the end. BTW, what was the deal with the flagrant fouls?!?!? The Los Angeles Lakers looked like they were simply running through practice drills as they spanked the New Orleans Hornets. The Orlando Magic proved that you need more than a great mobile center in order to advance in the NBA playoffs. Howard was great. The rest of the team was awful. The Atlanta Hawks move on to the second round.
- Speaking of sports – I really, really, dislike the hype over the NFL draft. More than 50% of these guys are going to flame out. The list of over-hyped 20s is nearly endless. The fact that professional NFL coaches, owners and scouts cannot predict future performance is amazing. Just look at five years ago, (the top 10 picks in order) – Mario Williams (great player), Reggie Bush (periods of greatness mixed with average play), Vince Young (classic over hyped player), D’Brickashaw Ferguson (great player), AJ Hawk (one of the reasons the Packers won the SuperBowl), Vernon Davis (great two years ago; not so great last year), Michael Huff (seven ints in five years!!), Donte Whitner (five ints in five yrs and 19 passes defensed), Ernie Sims (one int, four and a half sacks; was traded from original team already), Matt Leinart (much hyped and now out of football). You decide if the pros did a great job at picking future players. Cam Newton was the first drafted yesterday. The second round of the draft is happening now.
- I’m reviewing the People’s Budget. I’m liking what I’m seeing. I’ll have more on the People’s Budget. I like the idea of balancing the budget and having a surplus by 2012.
Click to Enlarge
- ATLS, the standard in trauma care, was started nearly 35 years ago. An orthopedic surgeon crashed his plane with his wife, mother and four kids with him in the plane. His terrible ordeal led for him to push for changes in trauma care. Great story.
- Senator Al Franken has introduced a bill in Congress that will force Congress to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I’m liking this.
- Donald “Birther” Trump continues to prove how classy he is by dropping da F-Bomb on camera.
- As I said yesterday, the birthers were going to say that Obama’s birth certificate ain’t real. I knew it. Whatever. (Btw, note the familiar formula: local conservative blogger types something that makes no sense. Drudge picks up the nonsense and plasters it on his front page. The craziness goes viral from there.)
- Michele Bachmann is dancing away from the GOP plan to end Medicare. Maybe she is smarter than I give her credit for??
What are your thoughts this Friday afternoon? Hate the hype of the draft or the Royal “pain” Wedding?
Catching a plane….
Republican strategy and President Obama
The Republican strategy to win elections is not new. The Republican strategy was first really put into play by Richard Milhouse Nixon. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the former president learned how to divide a populace and get elected. He used the classic Republican strategies: hot button topics and demonizing your opponent. While you wrap yourself in Mom, apple pie and the American flag, you paint your opponent as an outsider. Your opponent is someone who is not quite as American as you are. Your opponent represents something different. Specifically, you must attack your opponent’s strengths. You must take their strengths and make them weaknesses. Whether it is a war veteran like Max Cleland or John Kerry, the GOP painted these men as cowards and as un-American.
This brings me to Barack Obama and his birth certificate. There was plenty of evidence that Barack Obama was born United States. As a matter fact, the evidence was overwhelming. We have the fact that his “short” birth certificate was certified by the state of Hawaii. What is the incentive for Hawaii to lie? Do they get any monetary reward for saying that Barack Obama is really a citizen when he is not? Is there any significant prestige that goes with saying that the sitting president is from your state? Sure, there are some benefits, including financial grants, but is it worth it to create a whole conspiracy? I doubt it. To me, the most convincing aspect to this story was the fact that both Honolulu papers back in 1961 carried the birth announcement of Barack Hussein Obama. I just don’t know how you think you can make that up.
So, yesterday, the president of the United States released the long form of his birth certificate. Now, the controversy is over.
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No, it is not. The controversy was never about the birth certificate. The controversies are about the man himself. Remember the Republican strategy. Paint the president as someone who is somehow un-American. Paint him as someone who is less American than you and I. The long form of the birth certificate, then, will not be enough. There are several avenues of attack. The long form is not legitimate. Look at Donald “I’m a publicity whore” Trump, how he effortlessly pivoted from the birth certificate to Obama’s college and postgraduate diplomas. If President Obama was not a good student, how did he get into Harvard? “Release more information,” they cry. There will never be enough information.
Here is the take-home lesson. Republicans will never stop. They will always play their card – He is not one of us. Finally, Republicans will never admit that they’re wrong. Never.
Grab Bag – Wednesday
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- It is good to see that the Republicans are now getting an earful from their constituents. I don’t know why they seriously thought they could vote for abolishing Medicare and figure there would be no consequences.
- Severe storms continue to roll through the Midwest. Those folks in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee are used to violent thunderstorms this time of year. I still hope and pray that everyone stays safe and informed.
- Will John Boehner draw a line in the sand over Medicare cuts? Remember that Republicans are rewarded by giving money to the rich and giving a lump of coal to the poor.
- NATO is intensifying its bombing in Libya.
- For the last several years I’ve had this huge cloud over my head. The cloud was Afghanistan. I still don’t really understand what our goals are there. I haven’t understood it for over four years. I thought Afghanistan was the “good” war. How do you take a society that is locked in the 1600s and propel them to the modern era? A large tunnel was dug in an Afghanistan prison and over 1000 inmates escaped. Seriously!
- Speaking of tunnels, a trucker was sentenced to 21 years in jail because of his association with marijuana trafficking, tons of marijauna. Interesting part of this story was that this tunnel was dug across the Mexico-United States border in order to bypass custom officials. When are we simply going to legalize marijuana and kill this type of trafficking?
- Oklahoma lawmakers have just passed a law which will give an offender up to life in prison for cooking hashish. Life in prison. Why not life plus five years? This is over the top.
- The Dallas Mavericks won the other night and lead the series against the Portland Trail Blazers three to two in the best of seven. I know that the Dallas Mavericks do not have a chance of winning the NBA championship, but every year I get drawn into the playoffs like Charlie Brown, enticed to try to kick the football with Lucy holding it. Just like Charlie Brown, I suspect that the Dallas Mavericks will disappoint me again this year.
- An 11th grader has figured out how to digitize our fallen soldiers from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who were buried in Arlington Cemetery. Congratulations to him! I’m not sure why are Department of Defense couldn’t figure that out.
- Texas Congressman Ron Paul has announced he’s forming an exploratory committee to run for president… Again.
- If you play professional baseball, professional football or professional basketball, you are truly in the spotlight. If you’re mentally unstable, your meltdown is seen by all. For the past few years we’ve been watching the meltdown of Albert Haynesworth. He is been charged with sexual abuse for fondling a waitress. This guy needs help and not jail. He needs a lot of help.
- The great and soulful Phoebe Snow has died at the age of 60. She and Minnie Ripperton were two of the best voices throughout the ’70s. Phoebe left music too soon for my tastes. She dropped out of music in the early ’80s. Ms. Snow, RIP.
Grab Bag – Tuesday
A vegetable tray and I didn’t get along last night. So, I’m moving gingerly. Also, my allergies are kicking my butt.
From Political Animal:
- Libya: “NATO warplanes struck Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s compound here early Monday and bombed a state television facility in an escalation of the air campaign to aid the rebellion against his four decades in power. The attack on the compound was the third since air raids began in mid-March, but the strike at the television facility was the most significant broadening yet of the NATO air campaign.”
- The Syrian crackdown intensifies: “The Syrian Army stormed the restive city of Dara’a with tanks and soldiers and helped detain dozens in towns across the country Monday in an escalation of a widening crackdown on Syria’s five-week-old uprising, according to human rights activists, residents and accounts posted on social networking sites. They said at least 25 people were killed in Dara’a, with reports of bodies strewn in the streets.”
- On a related note, the Obama administration is considering sanctions against the Assad government.
- Afghanistan: “Taliban militants dug a lengthy tunnel underground and into the main jail in Kandahar city and whisked out more than 450 prisoners, most of whom were Taliban fighters, officials and insurgents said Monday.”
- Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) wanted the U.S. Supreme Court to rule immediately on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. The justices turned him down. (ed note: I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing. I think that it is a great thing. It allows the Obama administration to sharpen their arguments.)
- Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh will give up power in exchange for immunity from prosecution for him and his family.
- Taking good news where I can find it: “More people bought new homes in March, giving the battered industry a small lift after the worst winter for sales in almost a half-century.”
- Daniel Luzer: “In 2009 President Obama announced that the United States should have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by the year 2020. We’ve got a long way to go.”
- And I was curious to see whether Atlas Shrugged: Part I would be a successful film, given Tea Party support. After two weeks in theaters, it appears to the movie is an embarrassing flop.
A Few Things This Monday Morning
- Taking another look at representative Ryan’s budget, anyone who is dependent upon Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security would simply be out in the cold. This is a frontal assault on the social safety net.
- Guantánamo Bay documents have been released, or rather leaked, to the press. 172 prisoners remain at Guantánamo Bay. While these documents provide new insight, I’m still curious as to why Guantánamo Bay has not been closed.
- The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol has been a fixture on Fox News for over a decade. To say that he was a cheerleader for the invasion in Iraq would be an understatement. He was on Fox News on Sunday pushing for an escalation in Libya. One of the things that you’ve gotta love about Bill Kristol is that he is incredibly consistent.
- Rick Santorum, on the other hand, disappeared from the national scene for about two years. Remember that Rick Santorum “found the weapons of mass destruction” that no one else could find. Yet, for some reason, Fox News believes that the former senator has something meaningful to say. Yesterday, he let us know that it’s okay to default on our national debt, which truly means that this man is not a serious politician, nor a serious political thinker. He also believes that “gays have enough rights.”
- Representative Gabrielle Giffords seems to be making progress in rehab. This is good news.
Just a couple of things – Sunday
- Two years ago, Democrats were toying with the idea of expanding the coverage of medical healthcare to those who didn’t have it. They were looking to end the ability of insurance companies to simply drop people because they were too expensive. Congressmen had town halls and faced extremely angry and belligerent constituents. Now that Republicans have voted to end Medicare where is that same type of public anger and outrage? We must remember that Republicans have been trying to end Medicare for over 40 years.
- In spite of Senator John Ensign resigning, the Senate ethics committee continues its investigation.
- Republicans were somewhat confused in their weekly address. For some reason, they haven’t gotten the memo that the economy is finally creating jobs.
- Here’s an inside look at the new Nintendo Wii2. Better graphics. Faster chips. Cool!
- Brad Watson is reporter for WFAA in Dallas. Now, we must remember that Dallas is a conservative city in the middle of a conservative state. This is the raw 7 min. video of Brad Watson’s interview with president Barack Obama. It is my opinion that Brad Watson wanted to “trip up” the president. He wanted to use this interview to propel him to greater heights and because of this he took this “aggressive” interview style with the president. I found his questions to be irritating rather than insightful. What you think?
Rick Perry Calls For Prayer To End Texas Drought
( Above–It is hot and dry in Texas)
These three days run from April 22 to April 24.
Here is the link to the official proclamation.
From the proclamation—
WHEREAS, these dire conditions have caused agricultural crops to fail, lake and reservoir levels to fall and cattle and livestock to struggle under intense stress, imposing a tremendous financial and emotional toll on our land and our people; and
WHEREAS, throughout our history, both as a state and as individuals, Texans have been strengthened, assured and lifted up; it seems right and fitting that the people of Texas should join together in prayer to humbly seek an end to this devastating drought and these dangerous wildfires;
This is good. Texans of all kinds pray and find solace and hope in prayer. Governor Perry is right to call upon Texans to consider the hard times that many in our state are dealing with at the moment.
However, if prayer is a possible solution to the drought impacting all Texans, it could also be so that the drought is a plague being visited upon Texas from God for how hard our hearts our towards the poor and most vulnerable in our state.
Governor Perry and our Texas legislature are currently considering brutal cuts to our state budget. These cuts would hurt some of the most needy and most hard-working Texans.
Texans have the option to pray for Governor Perry to be a more decent human being. Texans have the option to pray that we consider climate science as we deal with droughts and hurricanes in the Lone Star State.
Here is a 1953 Life Magazine article reporting how Texans at that time also dealt with a drought and prayed for rain. Maybe at that time Texans were being punished for Jim Crow laws. Maybe Texas has been on the wrong side of God for a long time.
Prayer and concern for others is of great value. At the same time, we must recall John Kennedy‘s words” that here on Earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
(Below–The Seventh Plague as painted in 1823 by John Martin. The seventh plague visited upon Egypt by God was as follows–”And Moses stretcheth out his rod towards the heavens, and Jehovah hath given voices and hail, and fire goeth towards the earth, and Jehovah raineth hail on the land of Egypt’
Grab Bag Friday
As usual, running late.
- Pesticide exposure has been linked to lower IQs.
- Senator John Ensign announced late last night that he is resigning. I have talked extensively about John Ensign here and here. He should’ve resigned several years ago. He is a disgrace to the Senate, to the state of Nevada and to the American people.
- As Neil pointed out, Texas Governor Rick Perry is asking Texans to pray for rain.
- A new poll of Republicans reveals that if you say something often enough people will begin to believe it. 45% of these Republican adults who were polled believe that Obama was not born in the United States. Simply crazy. So, I guess that they think that the Supreme Court is covering up for Obama? How does that make any sense?
- You knew it was only a matter of time before we would begin predator strikes in Libya. The time is now. I continue to be more and more disturbed by our military involvement, not just in Libya, but around the world.
- Representative Keith Ellison spars with Sean Hannity.
What stories are you following? Any thoughts?
Obama lays out his vision of America
I have watched this speech twice. It is really great.
From George Lakoff:
Last week, on April 13, 2011, President Obama gave all Democrats and all progressives a remarkable gift. Most of them barely noticed. They looked at the president’s speech as if it were only about budgetary details. But the speech went well beyond the budget. It went to the heart of progressive thought and the nature of American democracy, and it gave all progressives a model of how to think and talk about every issue.
It was a landmark speech. It should be watched and read carefully and repeatedly by every progressive who cares about our country — whether Democratic office-holder, staffer, writer, or campaign worker — and every progressive blogger, activist and concerned citizen. The speech is a work of art.
The policy topic happened to be the budget, but he called it “The Country We Believe In” for a reason. The real topic was how the progressive moral system defines the democratic ideals America was founded on, and how those ideals apply to specific issues. Obama’s moral vision, which he applied to the budget, is more general: it applies to every issue. And it can be applied everywhere by everyone who shares that moral vision of American democracy.
Discussion in the media has centered on economics — on the president’s budget policy compared with the Republican budget put forth by Paul Ryan. But, as Robert Reich immediately pointed out, “Ten or twelve-year budgets are baloney. It’s hard enough to forecast budgets a year or two into the future.” The real economic issues are economic recovery and the distribution of wealth. As I have observed, the Republican focus on the deficit is really a strategy for weakening government and turning the country conservative in every respect. The real issue is existential: what is America at heart and what is America to be.
In 2008, candidate Obama laid out these moral principles as well as anyone ever has, and roused the nation in support. As president, as he focused on pragmatics and policy, he let moral leadership lapse, leaving the field of morality to radical conservatives, who exploited their opposite moral views effectively enough to take over the House and many state offices. For example, they effectively attacked the president’s health care plan on two ideas taken from the right-wing version of morality: freedom (“government takeover”) and life (“death panels”). The attacks were successful even though Americans preferred the president’s health care policies (no preconditions, universal affordable coverage). The lesson: morality at the general level beats out policy at the particular level. The reason: voters identify themselves as moral beings not policy wonks. (more…)
Rick Perry & Texas Ask For Federal Help On Wildfires
( Above—2011 Texas wildfires.)
‘Texas Gov. Rick Perry is asking the federal government to declare the state a disaster area, a bid to spur assistance during a particularly potent wildfire season that has imperiled lives, structures and livelihoods in 252 counties, his office said in a statement Sunday. In his letter written late Saturday to President Barack Obama, sent through a Texas-based Federal Emergency Management Agency official, Perry said that above-average temperatures, lack of rain and low humidity have “caused extreme fire danger over most of the state.” ”The wildland fire risk potential has reached a critically high level,” the governor wrote. These conditions “present a serious hazard to the lives and property of the citizens of the state.”
I see.
Texans need help from the federal government because of things beyond their control.
I thought the conservative Texas ethos was that a man or woman controls his or her own fate.
This call for help from Washington is being made by a Governor who has engaged in treasonous speculation about secession, and who is pushing savage budget cuts on the most vulnerable Texans.
We should recall that while those suffering from the impact of wildfires merit quick help, many in Texas nursing homes or many Texans who are sick due to no fault of their own also need help.
Of course, it is no surprise that Rick Perry wants help from Washington. According to a map prepared by Texas State Comptroller of Public Accounts Susan Combs, Texas took almost $28 billion dollars in federal stimulus money.
I’d also like to know when the Tea Party volunteer fire companies and the Tea Party disaster relief teams will be rushing to assist people impacted by the fire? Where are county Republican parties in Texas organizing teams of citizen-volunteers to help out our fellow Texans so that they will not have to turn to government?
Are we going to allow socialized fire companies of public employees team up with Washington to do the job that everyday Texas citizens should be doing?
People who have been harmed by the fires should be helped. However, since many of our political leaders in Texas would rather people die than use the Rainy Day fund or raise the taxes needed to meet the legitimate needs of Texans, it is fair to comment when these same officials declare that some Texans are indeed worthy of help from government.
Let’s be clear about the facts—
1. Despite all the tough talk, Rick Perry calls on Washington and Barack Obama for help to solve problems facing Texas.
2. Despite all the criticisms of the federal government from Republican political leaders, Texas received many billions of dollars of Barack Obama approved stimulus funds.
3. While I’m certain many very good citizen volunteers are helping out with the wildfires, the Tea Party movement and other Texas conservatives who sing the praises of citizen action are no place to be found in any organized fashion when help is needed most.
A couple of things – Thursday
I’m still, frozen (or would focused be a better term?) on the fact that S&P decided that it needed to announce that US debt is getting “too” out of control.
From Brad DeLong:
What is going on here? A sovereign-debt downgrade is supposed to mean that a government’s finances have become shakier: the likelihood of internal price inflation is higher, the future value of the nominal exchange rate is likely to be lower, and the possibility that creditors might not get their money back in the form and at the time they had contracted for had gone up. The value of the dollar should have fallen. The nominal interest rates on U.S. Treasury debt should have risen. The value of equities could have gone either way–macroeconomic chaos would diminish future profits, but stocks have always been and remain a hedge against inflation. That is not what happened here: equities fell, the dollar rose, nominal U.S. Treasury interest rates were unchanged.
There are I think, two things to bear in mind.
First, you can go insane trying to overinterpret short-term market movements.
Second, news comes in flavors: new news, old news, no news, and political news.
If S&P’s announcement were new news being conveyed to the market we would have expected to see the standard pattern that we did not–dollar down, Treasury nominal interest rates up, equities either way. So it is not new news.
If the announcement were old news we would have expected to see no price movements–the smart money would already have taken up their positions, and when those less-informed investors to whom S&P was news responded by selling the smart money was there to buy and offset. That’s not what we saw either: so it is not old news.
If it were no news–if the market as a whole simply thought that S&P was irrelevant–then we would have expected to see no price movements at all. The problem is that we did see price movements: both in equities, and in the dollar. So it is not no news.
That leaves us with political news. (more…)
So, if this is just political theater, who’s behind it? I mean Standard and Poor’s doesn’t have the greatest track record of standing up for the American people. Here is the best thing that I have read about ridiculousness of S&P statement:
They put a “negative” outlook on the U.S. AAA credit rating, citing rising budget deficits and debt.
To which I say “Who Cares?”
Its not that I disagree with their assessment — I do not — but I pay it little heed. It was much more important to me as an investor that PIMCO’s Bill Gross was out of Treasuries a month ago (and indeed, is short) than what S&P says. That was all any bond investor needed to know — no ratings agency necessary.
If ever there was an organization more corrupt, incompetent, and less capable of issuing an intelligent analysis on debt than S&P, I am unaware of them. Why do I write this? A huge part of the reason the US is in its awful financial position is due to the fine work of S&P.
Consider what Nobel Laurelate Joseph Stiglitz, economics professor at Columbia University in New York observed:
“I view the ratings agencies as one of the key culprits. They were the party that performed that alchemy that converted the securities from F-rated to A-rated. The banks could not have done what they did without the complicity of the ratings agencies.”
Hence, the “negative outlook” of US debt has come about because the inability of Standard & Poor’s to have performed their jobs rating mortgage backed securities. Ultimately, this enabled the entire crisis, financial collapse, enormous budget deficit and now political over the debt ceiling.
Of course there is a negative future outlook. Its in large part the work product of S&P and Moody’s.
Why we even have Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization (NRSRO) any longer following their payola =driven corruption, their gross incompetency and their inability to discharge their basic duties is beyond my understanding.
So, why didn’t someone investigate S&P and Moody’s for cooking the books? They took garbage and slapped a AAA rating on it and smiled. They also took serious money from all of the major banks who were feeding them these mortgage backed securities. Isn’t that fraud?
Outsourcing is killing the middle class
It would seem that this would be obvious to almost everyone, but…
From TP:
A Washington Post/ABC News poll released this morning finds that 44 percent, a plurality, of Americans think the economy is getting worse, rather than staying the same or getting better. With unemployment hovering around 9.6 percent while economic inequality is at levels not seen since the Depression, many Americans feel as if the economy is leaving them behind.
The Wall Street Journal reports today that Corporate America certainly isn’t doing its part to help bring America out of its economic malaise. The paper surveyed employment data by some of the nation’s largest corporations — General Electric, Caterpillar, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Chevron, Cisco, Intel, Stanley Works, Merck, United Technologies, and Oracle — and found that they cut their workforces by 2.9 million people over the last decade while hiring 2.4 million people overseas.
The paper notes that this is actually a sharp reversal from trends in the late 1990s, when these major companies were creating more jobs in the United States than overseas. Yet by 2001, things took a turn for the worse, and these corporations have been adding more jobs abroad than at home, as is illustrated here:
S&P said what?
Under George W. Bush, Wall Street said nothing as the Bush administration enacted three major tax cuts in four years. None of the tax cuts were paid for. There were no major spending cuts proposed to offset the tax cuts. Wall Street sat silent. The Bush administration started two major wars. Again, none of this was paid for. The Bush adminstration did nothing to try to raise capital to pay for the wars and Wall Street was silent. Now we are coming out of a recession. It is imperative that the government spends money in order to get us out of the recession. Suddenly, Wall Street has something to say about our debt ratio! This is the same rating agency that rubber stamped garbage mortgage derivatives as AAA and AA. Now, I’m sure this is not politically motivated. They’re just warning the United States about our debt ratio. Interesting.
From TPM:
The threat of a downgrade raises the stakes in the struggle between President Obama’s Democratic administration and his Republican opponents in the House to get control over a nearly $1.4 trillion budget deficit and $14.27 trillion debt burden.
The White House last week announced plans to trim $4 trillion from the deficit over the next 12 years, mostly through spending cuts and tax hikes on the rich. Congressional Republicans want deeper spending cuts and no tax increases.
The deficit problem has become crushing since the financial crisis of 2008. Now for every dollar the federal government spends, it takes in less than 60 cents in revenue.
A budget deficit running at nearly 10 percent of output and expected to grow will likely further swell a public debt load that’s already more than 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
“Because the U.S. has, relative to its AAA peers, what we consider to be very large budget deficits and rising government indebtedness, and the path to addressing these is not clear to us, we have revised our outlook on the long-term rating to negative from stable,” S&P said.
Even so, Austan Goolsbee, the top economist at the White House, downplayed S&P’s move, telling CNBC on Monday it was a “political judgment” that “we don’t agree with.
DoubleLine Chief Executive Jeffrey Gundlach said on Monday that the S&P warning “should serve as an effective cattle prod in pushing the politicians toward a program of spending cuts and tax increases.” (more…)
Want to kill a fragile recovery? Cap federal spending.
Every now and then senators/representatives propose things in Congress that sound good but are really terrible federal policy. A new bill that proposes to Federal spending at 20.6% of GDP is exactly one of those bills. This sounds reasonable. But with 25% of our GDP currently dependent on federal spending this would mean drastic cuts to the federal budget.
More from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities:
A prominent proposal by Senators Bob Corker (R-TN) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) to limit total federal spending to no more than 20.6 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is attracting increasing attention, may sound benign, but it would inevitably force enormous cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and possibly Social Security.
The Corker-McCaskill bill would impose automatic, across-the-board cuts (a “sequester”) to close the gap between projected spending and the proposed cap if the cap would otherwise be breached. If the cuts needed to reach the cap were achieved entirely through this mechanism, the estimated cuts would total about $1.3 trillion in Social Security, $856 billion in Medicare, and $547 billion in Medicaid over the first nine years that the cap was in effect, from 2013 through 2021. These figures are based on Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections of spending over the next decade under current policies and on the Corker-McCaskill formula for how across-the-board cuts would be imposed.
The cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs would grow much larger in subsequent decades. For one thing, the 20.6 percent cap would phase in gradually and would not be fully in effect until 2023 and thereafter. [1] For another, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid costs are projected to rise substantially in future decades due to the aging of the population and rising health care costs and, thus, would have to be cut by increasingly severe amounts to meet the Corker-McCaskill level. (more…)
Fixing the Budget (Updated)
Many people, mostly conservatives, have been yammering on and on about the budget. The deficit. The deficit. We’ve got to do this and we’ve got to do that. The sky is falling. Death and destruction. (Okay, I’ll admit that I made up that last part but both sides skip reason and go right to the fear/scare arguments.)
The New York Times has a nice budget calculator. You can fix the budget. You can choose the Republican way – cut – or the Democratic way – increase revenue and decrease spending. I have chosen a reasonable approach. Bush tax cuts should expire for those Americans making over $250,000 annually. This saves $54 billion. I’m going to go back to Clinton-era taxes. Life seemed to be okay during the 1990s. Both the rich and the poor made money. This type of taxing saves $32 billion by 2015 and $46 billion by 2030. (I would like to focus on 2015, as projecting to 2030 is crazy.) I would eliminate earmarks, saving $14 billion. Cut government contractors. It may not be popular with the privatize everything crowd but I’m tired of some of these contractors ripping off the government and the American people. This saves $17 billion. I think that we don’t have good goals in Afghanistan. Bring the troops home. Reduce the size of the military to pre-Iraq War size, cancel or delay some weapon systems and reduce noncombat military compensation and overhead. These changes reduce the debt by $143 billion. This is serious money and Grandma doesn’t have to worry about paying for medications. I think it only makes sense to increase the Medicare age of eligibility to 70 since Americans are living longer. Plus, let’s raise the social security age to 70. Americans who are making more and have significant savings will get reduced payments. Okay, I’m not going to go through all of my proposed changes, but we could fix the problem with 56% with tax increases and 44% from cuts. I save $506 billion by 2015. My projected budget saving for 2030 saves $160 billion. The budget is plenty balanced.
The best thing about the NYT calculator is that it isn’t hard to see what needs to be done. The problem is that our elected officials will not sit down and make reasonable compromises. We don’t need Sarah Palin and her poison tongue talking about NOT compromising. This is about serious government. In our system, you need to compromise to get things done. If you don’t want to get anything done, then you draw a line in the sand, which doesn’t help the American people.
Update from Balloon Juice:
To illustrate just how dishonest the Republican budgets really are, read Jason Kuznicki’s “Return to Normalcy” budget:
It’s got four basic parts:
- Return to Clinton-era rates of taxation, or at least something like them. As Ezra Klein has noted, this is very likely to happen in any event, because we’d need sixty Senate votes to extend the Bush tax cuts. We’ll just let them expire. As we’ll soon see, our Senators will be busy enough elsewhere.
- Remove the cap on the Social Security payroll tax. Yes, that means raising taxes. Yes, on the rich. Someone call the Koch brothers!
- Cap Medicare spending at GDP plus 1%. This is a doozy, I know. Can we do it? We’ll probably have to, like it or not, in any balanced budget plan.
- Reduce military spending to 1990s levels. In other words, bring the troops home. From everywhere. Let the force shrink by attrition. Cut spending on new weapons systems. Tell the world — much of it industrialized and friendly — that they will have to pay for their own defense, because we can’t afford it anymore. We’ve been doing way more than our fair share for way, way too long, and they can hardly say otherwise.
More or less, the plan would look like this.
This is similar to John’s do-nothing budget, or the do-nothing budgets of Annie Lowrey or David Leonhardt, or my budget. All these budgets have one thing in common: the end of the Bush tax cuts. To help illustrate where that will put us in the Big Scheme of Things, a chart!
Here’s how we know Wall Street needs to be behind bars
Sometimes when I look at everyone involved in the mortgage scam I get a headache. Everyone at almost every stage of the process was trying to rip off the American consumer. We have the mortgage lender who was changing mortgage applications to get Americans who were not qualified for mortgages qualified. First lie. Then we have those same mortgage lenders telling Americans that they have fixed mortgages, when in fact they had highly adjustable interest rate mortgages. Lie #2. These lenders would then sell those mortgages to Wall Street. Wall Street would package the mortgages into securities which were sold to pension funds and other institutions that require AAA graded securities. In order to get garbage labeled as AAA, Wall Street needed a partner in crime. They got Moody’s and other rating agencies to play the game. Lie #3. Finally, and what I think is the nail in the coffin, Wall Street got nervous when everything started heading south. It was clear that many of these AAA grade securities were garbage. If the AAA stuff was vomitous then was the BBB rated stuff? Wall Street started hedging their bets with CDOs. Basically, they were betting against their customers and what they were telling their customers and the American people.
More later and thanks for the heads up (LM)
Just a couple of things (updated)
- I have been playing some golf with a couple days that I have off. I’m waiting for my teacher, a Jedi, to show up and tell me to concentrate and that might help my golf ball stay in the fairway.
- Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer took a branding iron with the letters VETO imprinted on to a stack of Republican legislation. These bills would have rolled back clean energy and capped award damages from auto crashes. Good for him.
- New polls states that Americans reject Ryan’s plan for killing Medicare. We have to be careful. We completely lost the debate on Healthcare was we allowed the insurance companies to flood Americans with false information.
- High wind and hail in the DFW area. Same storm system kills 6.
- I’m not sure that we need MRI’s on the battlefield.
- Conservative David Prosser wins the Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin by over 7,000 votes. Odd how votes just turned up. Human error?
- Obama’s budget plan labelled as risky by Robert Reich. I agree.
- Three large poker web sites are shut down by the Feds.
- Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (presidential hopeful) is having a difficult time with the facts. Hey, Tim, public sector jobs are down and private sector jobs are up. Just read. It’s really not that hard to get this right.
- The House passes the GOP budget plan without a single Democratic vote. Now, the Senate needs to reject this stinking pile of garbage.
- Moammar Gadhafi uses cluster bombs against his own people.
- Massachusetts is looking at new ways to attack raising healthcare costs. They current approach isn’t working, which is exactly what I said two years ago.
So what stories are you following? What’s on your mind?
We are being taxed into the stone age, another myth
Conservatives have told us over and over again that our taxes are simply too high. We pay too much. Several years back I went to see J. C. Watts speak. I’m happy to say that I didn’t have to pay that much to hear him, because he was on the tax thing. I’m paraphrasing – “When we get up in the morning we are reminded that we are paying taxes on our house. When we brush our teeth we are paying taxes on the water and toothbrush. When we kiss our spouses in the morning, there is a marriage tax. We get in our cars and there is a car tax. When we fill up with gas there is a gas tax. We are taxed to death, which, of course, bring us to the death tax.” The conservatives were standing on their feet. I’m sure that some were crying with joy that someone was feeling their pain. I felt nauseated because Mr. Watts was shoveling garbage. He was mixing recurring taxes with one-time taxes. He was mixing local, state and federal taxes all in one bag (which is a great way to get conservatives frothing at the mouth but a terrible way to move us past rhetoric and towards policy solutions).
Today our federal tax burden is less than it has been since 1950, when Harry Truman was president in. The People’s Republica of China had just been formed. The Russians had just exploded their first hydrogen bomb. GM and Ford were stable companies. That was a long time ago. Republicans would have us believe that we are paying more in federal taxes than ever. That is simply not true.
From EPI:
This diminished tax burden on the wealthiest has contributed to the historically low federal revenue levels we are seeing today, and in turn, to higher deficits. The Congressional Budget Office projects federal revenue in 2011 will total 14.8% of GDP—the lowest level since 1950. At the same time that the tax burden has shifted away from the wealthy, this same top income group has enjoyed massively disproportionate income gains. Between 1992 and 2007, a time in which income for the average household and top one percent grew 13% and 123%, respectively, the income for the top 400 households grew fully 399%.
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Errington C. Thompson, MD, is a surgeon, scholar, full-time sports fan and part-time political activist. He is active in a number of community projects and initiatives. Through medicine, he strives to improve the physical health of all he treats...
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