January 28, 2010
Posted by Richard Cochrane on January 28, 2010
· State of the Union Forgettable.
· NYT Calls Obama Budget Freeze “Joke of Day”
· Haiti Police Shooting Scavangers
· Obama Moves to Stop “Bed Wetting”
· Brown Would Beat Obama: Zogby poll
“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work,” said Henry Morgenthau Jr. — close friend, lunch companion, loyal secretary of the Treasury to President Franklin D. Roosevelt — and key architect of FDR’s New Deal.
State of the Union addresses have generally been easily forgettable affairs and last night’s was no exception. Obama was more defiant than contrite despite recent political poundings. Notably he punted Obamacare to Pelosi and Reid – the latter so inspired that he fell asleep during Obama’s speech.
Obama oratorical skills and teleprompter-ease were not diminished and he deserves an A- but gets a D+ for content. We are told Iraq and Iran will be absent American combat troops in 2011 although we know tens of thousands will remain in various “non-combat” roles. He shook a finger at North Korea and Iran but avoided China and all others only devoting seven of a long seventy minutes to foreign policy and national defense.
Jobs we are told are his priority as he demanded another “jobs bill” to replace last year’s failed one. His focus continues to be on WPA-like projects and misty notions of green energy.
The high point in my mind was his pledge to double U. S. exports.in two year and redouble those in five more years. How and where he did not explain. Obama refused to say the words “tax cuts” but still favors “tax credits” for small businesses who produce jobs – he “knows” big government has to first take and then give back rather than keep its hands off in the first place.
He chastised the Supreme Court causing Justice Alito to mouth “not true,” and called for an end of the don’t ask don’t tell policy.
Obama set the bench mark for BIOB (Blame It On Bush) indictments. He virtually ignored his much ballyhooed if lambasted so-called budget freeze.
About the only thing that made real news yesterday was Hilary Clinton’s absence and announcement that she will NOT serve 8-years as Secretary of State fueling speculation of a 2012 challenge or even VP spot. She says “No” — she wants to retire to write and teach.
Republicans generally glued to their seats glaring Nancy Palosi popped up and down like a June bug on a hot griddle dragging a grinning if annoyed VP Biden along.
Yesterday was Mozart’s birthday. The Austrian people are always trumpeting the fact that Mozart is from there. I think it’s meant to take your mind off any other very famous Austrians. - Ferguson
You gotta believe there’s something rotten in Denmark (and not just the Copenhagen climate talks either) when the NY Times’ JACKIE CALMES, calls Obama’s State of the Union proposed “budget freeze” the “Joke of the Day.”
Tomorrow night Obama will call for a three-year $25 billion freeze in spending on many domestic programs, and for increases no greater than inflation after that, an initiative intended to signal his seriousness about cutting the budget deficit, administration officials said Monday. That absurdly amounts to 59/100th of one percent per year of a one trillion 400 billion spending plan.
The officials said the proposal would be a major component both of Obama’s State of the Union address on Wednesday and of the budget he will send to Congress on Monday for the fiscal year that begins in October.
The freeze would cover the agencies and programs for which Congress allocates specific budgets each year, including air traffic control, farm subsidies, education, nutrition and national parks. It does not cover Congressional or other federal salaries or benefits
But it would exempt security-related budgets for the Pentagon, foreign aid, the Veterans Administration and homeland security, as well as the entitlement programs that make up the biggest and fastest-growing part of the federal budget: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
The payoff in budget savings would be small relative to the deficit: The New York Times says the estimated $250 billion in savings over 10 years would be less than 3 percent of the roughly $9 trillion in additional deficits the government is expected to accumulate over that time. Unfortunately its base figures and calculations are incomplete and do not consider the massive federal deficit already accumulated. But, even if correct it is not significant paying for but a few hours of interest on the skyrocketing national debt. The national debt is streaking toward $12.4 trillion amounting to over $112,000 per U. S. taxpayer so when it and the expected $9 trillion coming are added the debt tops $21 trillion bringing the individual taxpayer debt to $190,000 per taxpayer. About $4 trillion of the national debt is held by foreigners now and most of it by China.
The initiative holds political risks as well as potential benefits. Because Obama plans to exempt military spending while leaving many popular domestic programs vulnerable, his move is certain to further anger liberals in his party and senior Democrats in Congress, who are already upset by the possible collapse of health care legislation and the troop buildup in Afghanistan, among other things.
Fiscally conservative Democrats in the House and Senate have urged Obama to support a freeze, as a CYA move as the 2010 elections loom because it would suggest to voters, Wall Street and other nations that the president is willing to make tough decisions at a time when the deficit and the national debt, in the view of many economists, have reached levels that undermine the nations long-term prosperity. Perceptions that government spending is out of control have contributed to Obamas loss of support among independent voters, and concern about the governments fiscal health could put upward pressure on the interest rates the United States has to pay to borrow money from investors and nations, especially China, that have been financing Washingtons budget deficit.
Republicans were quick to mock the freeze proposal. Given Washington Democrats unprecedented spending binge, this is like announcing you’re going on a diet after winning a pie-eating contest, said Michael Steel, a spokesman for the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio.
The spending reductions that would be required would have to be agreed to by Congress, and it is not clear how much support Mr. Obama will get in an election year when the political appeal of greater fiscal responsibility will be vying with the pressure to provide voters with more and better services. The administration officials said the part of the budget they have singled out $447 billion in domestic programs amounts to a relatively small share, about one-eighth, of the overall federal budget.
But given the raft of agencies and programs within that slice, the reductions will mean painful reductions that will be fought by numerous lobbies and constituent groups. And not all programs will be frozen, the administration officials said; many will be cut well below a freeze or eliminated to provide increases for programs that are higher priorities for the administration in areas like education, energy, the environment and health.
The balancing act of picking winners and losers was evident on Monday at the White House. Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. outlined a number of new proposals that will be in the budget to help the middle class. They cover issues including child care, student loans and retirement savings.
Administration officials also are working with Congress on roughly $150 billion in additional stimulus spending and tax cuts to spur job creation. But much of that spending would be authorized in the current fiscal year, the officials said, so it would not be affected by the proposed freeze that would take effect in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
It is the growth in the so-called entitlement programs Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that is the major factor behind projections of unsustainably high deficits, because of rapidly rising health costs and an aging population.
But one administration official said that limiting the much smaller discretionary domestic budget would have symbolic value. That spending includes lawmakers earmarks for parochial projects, and only when the public believes such perceived waste is being wrung out will they be willing to consider reductions in popular entitlement programs, the official said.
By helping to create a new atmosphere of fiscal discipline, it can actually also feed into debates over other components of the budget, the official said, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity.
The administration officials did not identify which programs Mr. Obama would cut or eliminate, but said that information would be in the budget he submits next week. For the coming fiscal year, the reductions would be $10 billion to $15 billion, they said. Last year Mr. Obama proposed to cut a similar amount $11.5 billion and Congress approved about three-fifths of that, the officials said.
The federal governments discretionary domestic spending has grown about 5 percent on average since 1993, according to the administration. It spiked to about 27 percent from 2008 to 2009, however, because of the recession. The sudden increase reflected both the first outlays from the $787 billion stimulus package as well as automatic spending for unemployment compensation and food stamps that is triggered during an economic downturn.
The freeze that Mr. Obama will propose for the fiscal years 2011 through 2013 actually means a cut in real terms, since the affected spending would not keep pace with inflation.
According to the administration, by 2015 that share of the federal budget will be at its lowest level in a half-century relative to the size of the economy.
A lot of our caucus won’t like it but I dont think we have any choice, said an adviser to Congressional Democratic leaders, who would only speak on condition of anonymity about internal party deliberations. After Massachusetts and all the polls about independents abandoning us for being fiscally irresponsible, we cant afford to be spending more than Obama.
While the Democrats unexpected loss of a Massachusetts Senate seat in a special election last week gave new impetus to administration efforts to tackle the deficit, those efforts actually have been under way since last fall, when officials began early work on the 2011 budget.
Obamas budget director, Peter R. Orszag, initially directed Cabinet secretaries and agency heads to propose alternative budgets one with a freeze and another that cut spending by 5 percent. Months of internal arguments and appeals followed and the cutting idea has disappeared.
Oligopoly (ol-i-GOP-uh-lee) noun: A market condition where there are few sellers. ETYMOLOGY:From Greek oligo- (few) + -poly, patterned after monopoly, from polein (to sell).
It was inevitable that violence break out in an increasingly desperate Haiti now swarming with dogooder. Haitian police on Monday shot indiscriminately at scavengers and looters in Port-au-Prince, hitting two in the head as post-quake security deteriorated.
A group of police, pushed to keep control among an increasingly desperate population after the January 12 tremor which killed or injured many of their number and destroyed the city prison, opened fire on a warehouse from a building opposite.
An AFP photographer inside the scavengers’ building said two men were hit in the head, one of whom received medical attention. Two others were lying prone on the floor, one lifeless. The other was treated for a serious head wound.
A Haitian man in the street outside said he saw police pistol whip a man.
“This guy was trying to go inside (the warehouse), the cops took a gun straight to the back of the head. I don’t know why they do that. It’s not fair because everyone in Haiti is hungry,” the man, who declined to give his name, said.
Looters and scavengers have moved into the downtown commercial district, taking what they can from the ruins as bulldozers demolished damaged shops and warehouses.
The Haitian government has said the death toll from the January 12 quake, which shattered what little infrastructure existed in the capital and left a million people homeless, is expected to be around 150,000.
The next question is when wil the desperate form armed gangs and fight back. That could lead to outright civil war.
Over British objections the EU is sending 300 police officers into Haiti, and all those white faces with guns could become the trigger – shades of the French oppressors.
Of course the do-gooders are shocked.
John McCain’s wife Cindy McCain and their daughter Meghan have posed for photos endorsing pro-gay marriage here in California. Sen. McCain is very traditional. He believes a marriage should be between an old man and a hot-looking younger woman.- Leno
it is symptomatic of a profound misunderstanding of today’s America that Obama has resurrected David Plouffe, 43, the political strategist who managed his 2008 presidential campaign is back – this time in the White House – to “save” his presidency and hence the Democrat party from a debacle in 2010 and he in 2012..
His first public action was to say in a Washington Post Op-Ed piece published Sunday now is not the time for “bed-wetting” after the party lost a Massachusetts Senate election to pick-up driving Scott Brown.
“This will be a tough election for our party and for many Republican incumbents as well,” Plouffe writes. “Instead of fearing what may happen, let’s prove that we have more than just the brains to govern — that we have the guts to govern.”
Plouffe acknowledged the challenge won’t be easy because the governing party typically loses in midterm elections, but he urged courage, writing, “We may not have perfect results, but November will be nothing like the nightmare that talking heads have forecast.”
And, Plouffe added, “Let’s fight like hell, not because we want to preserve our status, but because we sincerely believe too many everyday Americans will continue to lose if Republicans and special interests win.”
Plouffe and the often ascerbic David Axelrod continue to signal and urge the resurrection of Obamacare which is now opposed by over 60% of the nation;s voters.
Both are ignoring voter dissatisfaction with Washington and the direction of healthcare reform contributed to Scott Brown’s U.S. Senate win in Massachusetts, a survey suggests.
In the poll, conducted by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University’s School of Public Health, 63 percent of Massachusetts’ special-election voters say the country is seriously off-track. Of those, two-thirds voted for the Republican state senator over Democrat Martha Coakley to serve out the term of the late Edward M. Kennedy, a Democrat who held the seat for nearly 47 years.
Respondents listed jobs and the economy as the most important issues. Overall, two-thirds of those who voted for Brown said they did so at least partly because of opposition to the Democratic agenda in Washington.
Three in four respondents said they want Brown to work with Democrats to inject Republican thinking into legislation. A smaller proportion — less than half — said they want Brown to work with Democrats specifically on healthcare legislation.
The survey revealed a decline in the proportion of voters who said the government should do more to solve problems. In 2008, 63 percent of Massachusetts voters said the government should do more, compared with 50 percent in the new poll.
Back in 1982, Scott Brown posed naked for Cosmo. Normally, you get elected to the Senate and then get caught with your pants down.—Leno
A stunning new poll conducted by Newsmax/Zogby reveals that Massachusett’s new Republican Senator-elect Scott Brown could defeat President Barack Obama in a presidential election. The Newsmax/Zogby poll released Tuesday found that the pair would be statistically deadlocked if the presidential election was held today.
The poll indicates surprisingly weak support for the president among independent voters, who favor the tyro Brown by 48.6 percent to 36 percent in a hypothetical matchup against Obama.
Mark McKinnon, the respected political strategist who created former President George W. Bush’s successful television ad campaigns in 2000 and 2004, told Newsmax that the survey results should trigger alarms for Team Obama.
“The real problem for Obama is that he has lost the middle, and losing the middle means losing independents,” McKinnon said. “And it is independents that are responsible for swinging elections one way or the other in this country. So if you lose independents, you’re going to lose the presidency.”
The poll asked likely voters: “If the election for president of the United States were held today and the only candidates were Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Scott Brown, for whom would you vote?”
The questions phrasing biases responses but underscores how far Obama has fallen.
Based on the 4,163 responses, Obama leads Brown by 46.5 percent to 44.6 percent. That amounts to a statistical tie because the Zogby survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.5 percent.
Brown has been the focus of national attention since his surprising upset last week of Democrat Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts race to fill deceased Senator Kennedy’s seat,that gave Republicans the 41st vote they need to filibuster measures in the Senate.
Artiodactyl (ahr-tee-o-DAK-til) adjective: Having an even number of toes on each foot. ETYMOLOGY:From Greek artio- (even in number, perfect) + -dactyl (toed, fingered). The mammal order Artiodactyla is made up of animals such as pig, camel, and giraffe. Those having an odd number of toes are called perissodactyl, from Greek perisso- (uneven, strange). Examples: horse, tapir, and rhinoceros.
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