Liberal press outlets are reporting, generally without criticism, the Obama administration's claim that its FY 2012 budget embodies "steep cuts" in federal spending over the coming decade. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, LET'S LOOK AT WHAT FEDERAL SPENDING WOULD BE UNTIL 2021 on the (admittedly silly) assumption that Obama's future projections are correct. Figures through FY 2010 are actual, those thereafter are Obama's budget projections; click to enlarge:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/02/028364.php
Steep cuts? Not really.
Obama budget reveals Obama’s core
Here’s what President Barack Obama’s new budget tells me: He hasn’t shifted to the center, he’s shifted into 2012 campaign mode, one that let’s him be who is really is.
The budget is A POLITICAL DOCUMENT THAT BETS VOTERS REALLY DON’T CARE MUCH ABOUT DEFICITS. (Over the next decade from 2012-2021, it would add another $8 trillion dollars to the national debt and take the national debt as a share of the overall economy to 77 percent from 62 percent in 2010). As such, OBAMA WILL PORTRAY HIMSELF AS THE JOBS-FIRST, GOING-FOR-GROWTH CANDIDATE who does a bit of fiscal gardening on the side — just a few prudent budgetary snips here and there…..
http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2011/02/14/obama-budget-reveals-obamas-core/
Obama’s team has created a political document with this budget which is designed to cast the Republicans in a party cutting out Grandma’s social security. It may work, but I doubt it. There is a large contingent in the country who realize what we are facing and who will back those who are for fiscal sanity. Played correctly, the youth vote could go to the Republicans.
How to balance the budget
Who should the country look to for balancing the budget? How much pain would be involved? Here is an interesting look at what other administrations have done.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner
“The Insane Years.”
In times to come, the period between the failed campaign of John Kerry and the Democratic control of the Congress, coupled with the beginning of the successful surge, SHOULD BE KNOWN AS “THE INSANE YEARS.” This was the era in which Guantanamo was a gulag, renditions were the stuff of Hollywood movies, and Bush and Cheney were deemed veritable war criminals. Was IT ALL A DREAM, THOSE NIGHTMARE YEARS OF 2004-7?http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/goodbye-to-all-that-2004-2007/
I recall all that only because OPRAH WAS JUST QUOTED AS CALLING FOR MORE CIVILITY TO BE SHOWN PRESIDENT OBAMA (“even if you’re not in support of his policies, there needs to be a certain level of respect”), echoing the president’s own post-Tucson insistence on a new amity between opponents. Bill Maher recently expressed outrage over the uncivil tone shown Barack Obama in Bill O’Reilly’s Super-Bowl Day interview. I think such concern for deference and conciliation is altogether fine and good; but, again, do we recall the crazy years of not so long ago?....
Somehow all this talk of civility aimed at the Republicans reminds me of the old saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.”
Business community blasts Obama's budget proposal
THE 2012 BUDGET OUTLINES MORE THAN $200 BILLION IN HIGHER TAXES FOR OIL AND GAS COMPANIES, banks and multinational firms - ideas that have been offered in past budgets and vehemently opposed by industry. It does not detail a core part of Obama's effort to win the trust of big business: an overhaul of the corporate tax code that would lower the overall rate paid by firms.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/14/AR2011021405757.html
"I'm just extremely disappointed," said Caroline Harris, chief tax counsel for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "I certainly did not expect to see a full plan. But I did think some good faith effort would have gone a long way with the business community."
Now where do you think the oil and gas companies will get that extra $200 billion in taxes? That’s right—from you and me.
Chasing Rainbows: Economic Myths, Environmental Facts
Amazon’s description:
Chasing Rainbows looks at the commonly held beliefs about what we should do to avoid, curtail or adapt to global warming and compares them to what we should actually be doing. This is not an argument about the science: Worstall leaves that entirely to others to debate. Rather, he asks what guides and indications we can draw from the economics already embedded in such pronouncements as the IPCC reports and the Stern Review. The answers will shock some: globalisation is part of the cure for climate change. Recycling of some things certainly saves resources but of domestic waste actually squanders them. Creating 'green jobs' is not a benefit but a cost of our actions.
We don't need to limit economic growth, quite the opposite, it's part of the solution, and the finite nature of the physical world is not a binding limit upon such growth.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1906768447?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwviolentkicom&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1906768447
Sounds like something anyone who is interested in the environment and economic growth should read.
Gabrielle Giffords Update
Compared to a sleek new laptop, that three-pound mass of fatty tissue called the brain may not look like much. But when it's injured, it adapts and rewires its circuits in new ways.
That's the kind of flexibility that doctors and rehabilitation SPECIALISTS HOPE TO ENCOURAGE IN GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, THE BRAIN-INJURED ARIZONA CONGRESSWOMAN.
Details about her recovery have been thin. But members of her staff say she recently began speaking for the first time since the Jan. 8 attack by a gunman in Tucson. BRAIN INJURY PATIENTS WHO REGAIN SPEECH TYPICALLY BEGIN TO DO THAT ABOUT FOUR TO SIX WEEKS AFTER THE INJURY, EXPERTS SAY.
Still, recovery for the 40-year-old Giffords WILL BE A LONG, TOUGH JOURNEY, as it is for anyone with a significant brain injury.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110214/ap_on_sc/us_sci_recovering_brain;_ylt=A0LEaoV7mllNb3IBkjms0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFlMG92cnR0BHBvcwMxMTUEc2VjA2FjY29yZGlvbl9zY2llbmNlBHNsawNkb2N0b3Jzd29ya3Q
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Our best wishes are with Congresswoman Giffords. She has a long road ahead of her.
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