The GOP's Budget Problem
In
the fiscal cliff negotiations so far, the president is offering to cut
$1.2 trillion in spending over the next ten years. Actually, this is
$850 billion in direct cuts and the rest in lower inflation adjustments
for Social Security and a dubious assumption of lower interest expense
from what it otherwise would have been. But let's go with the $1.2
trillion number.
These
numbers in trillions of dollars can easily be converted to numbers that
could represent the budget of a household by getting rid of a few
zeros:
|
Table 2
|
|
|
Federal Budget as a Household Budget
|
|
|
($)
|
|
|
Household income
|
$ 24,700
|
|
Household spending
|
$ 38,000
|
|
Amount added to the credit card
|
$ 13,300
|
|
Amount owed on the credit card
|
$163,500
|
|
Spending cuts offered by Obama
|
$ 1,200
|
Oops!
Doesn't look too good. That debt is pretty high given the household
income. And remember, there is no silver bullet on household income.
It is going to grow at about 4% per year (it grows in current dollars meaning the real growth in the economy plus
inflation). But expenditures are going to grow as fast or faster. And
even if we actually get the cuts being offered by Obama, they are only
11% of our annual household deficit.
And if this was your household, how comfortable would you feel about having debt on your credit
card of $163,500 when your income is $24,700? That cut in your
spending of $1,200 out of your total spending of $38,000 is not exactly
making a difference in your problem!
This
is the fix we have gotten ourselves into. The Obama administration has
been the most irresponsible, the most profligate in our history. And
remember, these are not extraordinary times. We have a weak recovery
and the employment situation is far, far worse than the 7.7%
unemployment rate (for instance, the average duration of unemployment is
40 weeks whereas historically it has been 15 weeks), but we are well
into a recovery. The recession ended in Q2 of 2009, so we have been
growing for over three years.
This recovery has been sluggish and real GDP is both below its long-term trendline and is growing at a slower rate than the long-term trendline. But real GDP is back at an all-time high. So while we have a weak recovery, it is
a recovery. We are not in a crisis like World War II. We are not
undertaking a great national investment. We are just getting and
spending on a day to day basis.
What has happened is that the bill for the welfare state has come due.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/12/the_gops_budget_problem.html
McConnell Calls Out Obama's Negotiation Charade
The office of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) responded to reports today that President Barack Obama called him and other congressional leaders to receive updates about negotiations to avoid the Jan. 1 "fiscal cliff" by noting that it was the "first time McConnell has heard from any Democrat, including the President, on this since Thanksgiving."The President and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) made a show of returning to Washington this week, as if to continue negotiations--when their open opposition to Speaker of the House John Boehner's "Plan B" last week helped doom that plan to defeat in the Republican caucus. House members were reluctant to vote for "Plan B" to begin with, since it would have raised some tax rates; the certainty that it would fail in the Senate made them even less enthusiastic.
Reid took to the floor of the Senate today to accuse Boehner of running a "dictatorship" in the House, poisoning the prospect of a bipartisan deal even further.
Prior to the failure of "Plan B," House Republicans had offered several plans, starting with Boehner's plan to raise $800 billion in revenues without raising tax rates. All were rejected by the White House and the Senate--which has not even passed a budget for three successive years, contrary to federal law.
While the President and the Senate leadership engage in a good cop-bad cop charade, the likely reality is that they have calculated that the "fiscal cliff" is bound to take place (and perhaps even suits their interests), and their sole focus is to convince the public that Republicans are to blame.
Given that President Obama's call to McConnell was the first he had received in over a month from any Democrat on the issue, it is probably that going over the "fiscal cliff" was the President's intent from the start.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/12/27/Exclusive-McConnell-Calls-Out-Obama-s-Negotiation-Charade
'Jobless Workers' Getting More Taxpayer Money to Pay Their Health Insurance Premiums
The U.S. Labor Department has rustled up more taxpayer money to help "jobless workers" pay their health insurance premiums."It is difficult enough to find new employment, let alone do so without health insurance for you or your family," Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said in a news release dated Dec. 26. "This funding will help eligible workers avoid that prospect by helping them pay for health insurance while they seek new jobs."
The money -- in the form of a $1,058,254 National Emergency Grant supplement -- will go to several thousand unemployed people in Alabama, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia.
National Emergency Grants are part of the Labor Secretary's discretionary fund. These grants provide assistance "in response to large, unexpected economic events which cause significant job losses." Usually the grants are used to re-train laid-off workers.
The grant supplement announced on Wednesday will provide two to three months of premium payments for unemployed people in the states mentioned above who are receiving Trade Adjustment Assistance benefits and are eligible for the Health Coverage Tax Credit program.
(Trade Adjustment Assistance helps workers who have lost their jobs as a result of increased imports or shifts in production out of the United States.)
Under the Health Coverage Tax Credit program, eligible individuals can receive 72.5 percent of premium costs for qualified health insurance programs. The payments cover the period of time it takes to complete Internal Revenue Service enrollment, processing and the first payment under the HCTC program.
A National Emergency Grant in the amount of $2,422,473 was awarded to the state of Maryland on Nov. 30, 2009, to serve about 1,890 people in Alabama, Maryland, Mississippi and South Carolina who were eligible to enroll in the HCTC program.
Wednesday’s supplemental award of $1,058,254 brings the total funding awarded for this project to $3,480,727, and it will bring the total number of people to be served under this grant to about 2,340.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/jobless-workers-getting-more-taxpayer-money-pay-their-health-insurance-premiums
Here comes the Alinskyite Right
David Gregory and Piers Morgan
have both met the Alinskyite Right, and progressives in positions of
power should take note. Both men are the targets of digital petition
drives aimed at holding them to their own standards, and ridiculing
them, invoking Rules 4 and 5 from Rules for Radicals:
At the time Alinsky wrote, there was still something of a conservative establishment among a few of the commanding heights of the economy, government, culture, and society. But since the 1960s, the left has grabbed control of education, the nonprofit sector, the arts and culture, and the Democratic Party. The Right feels, and actually is, powerless in most of these areas. Thus, conservatives are beginning to understands that we must emulate the (successful) tactics of the left, in leveraging our ability to influence the major institutions shaping our lives.
Update:
The great William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection links, and adds:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/12/here_comes_the_alinskyite_right.html4. "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.This may be one of the first signs of the direction the conservative movement will take in President Obama's second term, and I take heart from the development. Conservatives have read and assimilated the lessons in Rules, and with left thoroughly in control of the institutions of media, education and culture, a lot of petards are going to get a lot of hoisting in the next four years. Social media distribution makes it possible for funny or dramatic events to flow around the usual media cofferdams.
5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.
At the time Alinsky wrote, there was still something of a conservative establishment among a few of the commanding heights of the economy, government, culture, and society. But since the 1960s, the left has grabbed control of education, the nonprofit sector, the arts and culture, and the Democratic Party. The Right feels, and actually is, powerless in most of these areas. Thus, conservatives are beginning to understands that we must emulate the (successful) tactics of the left, in leveraging our ability to influence the major institutions shaping our lives.
Update:
The great William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection links, and adds:
We saw it not only with Gregory and Morgan, but in the reaction to the publication of the home addresses and personal information of licensed, law-abiding gun owners by a NY newspaper. Rather than just complain, someone published equally personal information about the editors and reporters at the newspaper. I detest both tactics, but it's a matter of holding them to their own rules via Alinsky.
Do not expect any help from the mainstream conservative media on this. Many of them are circling the wagons around Gregory, refusing to recognize that such deference would not be accorded them by NBC much less MSNBC.
EPA Head Lisa Jackson to Step Down
After four long years of wreaking havoc on the economy and small
businesses with job killing regulations in the name of environmental
protection, EPA head Lisa Jackson is stepping down from her position.
More about Jackson from the National Journal:
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2012/12/27/epa-head-lisa-jackson-to-step-down-n1474777 Jackson, the first black head of the EPA and the fourth woman to hold the job, has spent much of her tenure at the center of the energy and environment debate in Washington and was often criticized for the agency’s controversial Clean Air Act regulations.
The EPA during her tenure has undertaken several significant regulatory actions, including setting new standards to clean up mercury and other toxic emissions from coal power plants, establishing new fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards for motor vehicles and setting new standards to limit fine particle soot in the air.
The EPA also reversed course from the Bush administration's policies and declared that climate change posed a real threat to the environment.
Critics have accused the EPA of overreach and of putting in place “job-killing” regulations at a time of economic weakness. In the last year, Jackson and her colleagues have been grilled by congressional committees on the agency’s environmental rules and their effects on energy industries and economic recovery. The GOP-led House has passed laws trying to block or delay EPA regulations.The news of Jackson's departure comes a week after the EPA rolled out three new regulations. Her EPA is infamous for trying to push through regulations and fines on farm dust. She also played a large role in preventing the completion of the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that would have brought thousands of jobs to United States workers.
"I will leave the EPA confident the ship is sailing in the right direction, and ready in my own life for new challenges, time with my family and new opportunities to make a difference," she said in a statement. Jackson gave no exact date for her departure, but will leave after Obama's State of the Union address in late January.
In a separate statement, Obama said Jackson has been "an important part of my team." He thanked her for serving and praised her "unwavering commitment" to the public's health.
Well-Born' Students Have Armed Protection in Elite Schools
While elitist gun control zealots send their children to expensive private academies with armed guards and the latest state of the art security systems, regular public school students must rely on brave, unarmed teachers throwing themselves in front of deranged killers as their first line of defense.Using the wealth and status of parents to determine which students have the right to be protected should have every liberal do-gooder screaming for equal treatment. Instead, we have progressives like Chris Christie, Mayor Bloomberg and reporter David Gregory accusing the NRA's Wayne LaPierre of wanting to turn public schools into "armed camps" while they send their own kids to high-priced armed camps. Huh?
What about equality and fairness for all when it comes to guarding the nation's children?
Malia and Sasha Obama not only benefit from around the clock Secret Service protection, the elite school they attend, Sidwell Friends, employs special police officers trained in the appropriate use of deadly force. Are their lives and those of other millionaire children worth more than non-elites?
It's the same story with Meet the Press host David Gregory whose kids attend Sidwell. And how about Michael Bloomberg? His daughters went to the exclusive, well secured all-girls Spence School in New York's Upper East Side. Rahm Emanuel, Bill Ayers, Arne Duncan, the Obamas, Valerie Jarrett and a host of Chicago insiders have sent their little heirs to the exclusive University of Chicago Lab Schools which routinely hires armed police officers as part of its security plan.
Ivy League bound youngsters in private schools across the nation are the beneficiaries of top notch security systems which almost always include armed personnel. Yet ruling class pols like Obama and Bloomberg want to deny regular folks the same security their children enjoy. Obama, with his four-year "under the radar" push against our Second Amendment rights, has no problem suggesting the underclasses put their kids in harm's way.
Why? Shouldn't a classroom with vulnerable, defenseless children be the last place liberals would try and get away with their usual double standard? Or are progressives so bent on taking away the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens they would risk sounding and acting like their eugenicist predecessors? The ones who devised one set of rules for the better stock and another for their inferiors?
The specter of a eugenics minded ruling class is haunting the current armed guards-in-schools debate. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries wealthy philanthropists like Harriman, Carnegie and Rockefeller financially supported the movement to improve the human race. The rich used their money to fund scientists whose research would eventually lead to federal sterilization and abortion laws aimed squarely at the lower classes.
For over 100 years this toxic elitism has poisoned the liberal mindset to the point where we now have millionaire politicians and journalists hardly batting an eyelash at their own conscience-less calls for public school kids to be sitting ducks for madmen while paying tens of thousands to protect their offspring in educational fortresses.
Piers Morgan: How About We Amend the Bible
CNN host Piers Morgan, who is already facing angry deportation calls from 75,000 Americans over his attacks on the Second Amendment (and no, England doesn't want him back), is calling for a gay marriage amendment to the Bible.During a discussion on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” on Monday — Christmas Eve — with Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren, Morgan argued that there needs to be an “amendment to the Bible” for same-sex marriage, because like the Constitution, the Bible is “inherently flawed.”http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2012/12/27/piers-morgan-how-about-we-amend-the-bible-n1474551
“Both the Bible and the Constitution were well intentioned but they are basically, inherently flawed. Hence, the need to amend it,” Morgan told Warren during a conversation where Morgan emphasized the need for America to separate Church and State.
“My point to you about gay rights, for example, it’s time for an amendment to the Bible.”
“Uh, no,” replied Warren, in a conversation that remained civil between both parties. “Not a chance. What I believe is flawed is human opinion, because it constantly changes.”
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