Your opinion on the job that President Obama is doing so far (1 Viewer)

[The_Hunchback]

I believe the only way to fix this is to have term limits on the House and Senate but this will never happen.

We've got to stop voting the same idiots into office.

 

[TheFanatic]

Obama and his team have no chance to fix the economy broken by the Bush admin (and those who voted for him twice). The only way Obama can make his presidency anything other than a failure is if Bush, Cheney, etc. are brought to justice. It's the only way to recover the moral high ground.

Wake up, this all started in the early 1990's and every administration since then share the blame. That means Bush - Clinton - Bushand now Oboma, but it is the congress that has really got us in this mess and they are doing the same thing today. Do you really think Bush caused a world wide resession by himself. Like I said wake up this one falls squarely on the Congess going back to the early 90s.

(all schtick aside, this is a great answer. Clinton, Bush, Obama...what's the one constant? Senators and Congressmen who have unconquerable power bases and gigantic egos who are willing to forge their own agendas ahead of what's the right thing to do. That goes for the John McCains as well as the Barney Franks).

I believe the only way to fix this is to have term limits on the House and Senate but this will never happen.

This would help. Have people do what they can to leave a legacy rather than do what they can to get re-elected. But that would require a bunch of power addicts to give up their power. It just won't happen...

 

[Leroy Hoard]

We've got to stop voting the same idiots into office.

But without voting in new idiots.

 

[Maurile Tremblay]

Balko gives a status update: Obama is still bad on the issues where we thought he’d be bad, and still bad on the issues where we expected better from him. Oh, and he’s also still breaking campaign promises.

 

[CGRdrJoe]

I was neutral on Barrack, but now I'm anti the SOB. We can spend 300 billion to bail out an auto industry but we can't spend 250 million to save education, america is ####ed

 

[Statorama]

I was neutral on Barrack, but now I'm anti the SOB. We can spend 300 billion to bail out an auto industry but we can't spend 250 million to save education, america is ####ed

All that money of ours he spent lining the pockets of his buddies in the United Auto Workers Union sure could have done a lot of good helping the growing number of homeless people in this country.Oh yeah, and The Stimulus Plan is a bust

Biden's rosy report can't hide stimulus problems

By: Byron York

Chief Political Correspondent

05/15/09 1:38 AM EDT

This week, the White House released its first quarterly report on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the $787 billion stimulus bill. Reaction on Capitol Hill was swift: Republicans think it's a joke, while Democrats don't want to talk about it.

The report was unveiled not by President Obama but by Vice President Joe Biden, who said it "shows early progress providing immediate financial relief for American families and jump-starting billions of dollars in job-creating projects." In a press release, Biden claimed the stimulus has so far "created or saved" 150,000 jobs, and that "over 3,000 transportation construction projects have been funded in 52 states and territories."

You don't have to look too hard to find problems with Biden's work. First, nobody seems to know precisely where the figure of 150,000 jobs comes from. When President Obama used it in a speech on April 29, the website FactCheck.org pretty much demolished the claim. Previewing the Biden report on May 11, a "senior administration official" held a conference-call briefing with reporters and seemed unprepared when asked where the created-or-saved jobs actually are. "In terms of exactly where and in what sectors, that's not something I have numbers on," the official said, "because, precisely, we don't yet have any of the reporting."

As far as the 3,000 transportation construction projects are concerned, there are certainly some under way, but nobody seems able to confirm a number so large. "I'll buy lunch for the first person who can get a list of those transportation projects," one Senate Republican aide told me. "That's absolutely not true."

The real news about the stimulus is buried inside the Biden report. It says that as of May 5, $88 billion has been "obligated" for spending. "Obligated" is federalese for money that has been committed but not yet spent. A much smaller number, $28.5 billion, has actually been shoved out the door -- that is, $28.5 billion out of the stimulus total of $787 billion has so far been spent.

And where did it go? More than 95 percent has ended up in just two places: the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Labor. The Human Services money was poured into a program called FMAP, or the Federal Medical Assistance Program, where it was given to the states to help pay their Medicaid bills. The Labor money has gone for extended unemployment insurance benefits.

The report also shows that Health and Human Services will distribute by far the biggest chunk of stimulus money over the next year. The money has gone to HHS because it is the easiest place to spend lots of cash fast. But all that Medicaid and social services money, much of which will be used by state governments to cover their own spending excesses, is considered among the least stimulative parts of the stimulus bill.

The rest of the report is a series of anecdotes, which Biden calls "Reports From the Field." Some of the stories are well-worn. The Chicago window factory that has often figured in Obama-Biden discussions and photo-ops -- it's under new ownership and reportedly planning to rehire some laid-off workers. A Delaware company that makes traffic lights is said to be rehiring three laid-off employees. A South Carolina county is going to receive job-retraining money.

The stimulus is generating other anecdotes, too. Recently WBAL-TV in Baltimore reported that a local man, 83 years old, received a $250 Social Security stimulus check. The only problem was, it wasn't for him -- it was for his mother, who died on Memorial Day, 1967. WBAL said Social Security officials "blame the error on the strict mid-June deadline of mailing out all of the checks, which didn't leave officials much time to clean up all of their records." Would anyone be surprised if we see stories like this on local newscasts around the country?

At one point in the report, Biden boasts that the government has made commitments for $1.1 billion in stimulus spending every day since the $787 billion bill was signed into law in February. At that pace, it will take the administration nearly two years to come up with concrete plans to spend all the money -- and longer still to actually get it out the door.

And even then, we still might be trying to find out where it all went.

Byron York, The Examiner’s chief political correspondent, can be contacted at byork@dcexaminer.com. His column appears on Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blog posts can be read daily at ExaminerPolitics.com.

 

[TheAristocrat]

 

[Darth Cheney]

Judging Obama is kind of tough.

I think that the Obamites like him regardless.

I think that the old school, "Berkley liberal" type are kind of angry with him over a couple of things that happened this week.

Conservatives are going to hate him regardless.

Me?....the guys trying. He's made mistakes. He's done some good. I'm sure some of the things that he thinks are good are going to end up being mistakes.

 

[bostonfred]

Do you own a house, Stat?

 

[Statorama]

Buisiness Community frightened by Obama rhetoric

Obama's barbed words worry corporate world

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press Writer Charles Babington, Associated Press Writer – Fri May 15, 4:37 am ET

WASHINGTON – Relations between President Barack Obama and U.S. corporate leaders have grown tense in recent weeks, with business groups bristling over his sharp rebukes of lenders and multinational companies in particular.

Executives and trade groups that praised Obama's outreach during his post-election transition period say they have felt less welcome since he took office in January. More troubling, they say, are his populist-tinged, sometimes acid critiques of certain sectors, including large companies that keep some profits overseas to reduce their U.S. tax burden.

On Thursday in New Mexico, Obama chastised the credit card industry for sharply raising interest rates or fees with hard-to-find notice. He said consumers should be protected from "all kinds of harsh penalties and fees that you never knew about." Some of the dealings by credit card companies, he said, "are not honest."

He tempered his comments, however, saying Americans must be responsible for the debt they incur.

"Banks are businesses, too," Obama told a gathering in Albuquerque. "They have a right to insist that timely payments are made."

The gentler remarks, after weeks of increasingly sharp rhetoric, reflect Obama's efforts to avoid a full-scale war with business interests. He picks his shots, praising companies that embrace his proposals for health care and other matters, while hammering those that oppose him.

Some business leaders have focused on the harsh words lately, saying the president is being unduly divisive.

"It is traditional class-warfare rhetoric," said Jade West, a lobbyist for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors. "It's a little bit frightening."

Bill Miller, political director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, called Obama's remarks "an oversimplification of the real world."

Particularly in the areas of finance and taxation, Obama's language often seems to echo, and perhaps fuel, public anger over matters such as the large bonuses paid to executives of AIG, an insurance giant that was bailed out with public money.

When the president called for ending tax breaks for corporations doing business overseas, he assailed a "broken tax system, written by well-connected lobbyists on behalf of well-heeled interests and individuals."

In proposing to overhaul college loans, Obama said, "We have a student loan system that's rigged to reward private lenders without any risk."

After he accused a handful of Chrysler debt holders of seeking "an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout," some reportedly received death threats.

Rutgers University political scientist Ross Baker says Obama uses such pointed language to create an us-against-them dynamic in which he aligns himself with average Americans and depicts his opponents as selfish powers working just for themselves. Obama's targets, Baker says, usually are unsympathetic and faceless corporations or hedge funds.

"If you use inflammatory, populist language," Baker said in an interview, "it's best to use it on organizations or interests that aren't terribly popular."

"It's a negotiating ploy," he said. In the early stages of a presidency, he said, "you advance your cause very dramatically, even confrontationally."

The ploy can prove potent. On May 8, the final holdouts among Chrysler's creditors reluctantly agreed to accept far smaller repayments from a bankruptcy reorganization than they had first demanded. Obama's public rebukes had taken a toll, as had his hardball negotiations with all of Chrysler's lenders, unions, executives and other key players.

"The only point the president was making was that many creditors went the extra mile and kept Chrysler afloat," said David Axelrod, a top adviser to Obama. A handful of holdouts forced the bankruptcy, he said, "and it was important to explain that fact."

Axelrod said Obama has been consistent in describing groups that support or oppose his policies. For instance, he said, Obama has long criticized multinational companies that postpone or avoid paying certain federal taxes by keeping profits overseas.

The president, he said, is careful "not to castigate the vast majority of working people who are playing on the square."

Leaders of several corporate groups said they want greater access to Obama and his top advisers. Being invited to "summit" discussions with 200 people at the White House isn't enough, they say.

The administration defends its record. Obama invited members of the Business Council to the White House on Feb. 13. A month later he fielded questions from top corporate executives at a forum of the Business Roundtable. And this month Obama lauded Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft and other major businesses trying to hold down employees' medical costs.

Still, some groups seethe over various barbs and proposals, including Obama's bid to end some tax breaks for multinational companies.

The president says his plan will shift more jobs to the United States, but "it does exactly the opposite," said John J. Castellani, president of the Business Roundtable.

Despite the hour that Obama devoted to the trade group's March 12 forum at a Washington hotel, it is coordinating a major lobbying campaign against the president's tax plans.

"The international tax provisions are something that we oppose very, very strongly," Castellani said.

West, of the wholesalers' trade group, said Obama remains popular, but he risks overdoing the populist attacks. "There is overreaching that will catch up with them," she said.

A top GOP strategist warned Republicans and their corporate allies to move cautiously.

"Your political opponents are the Democrats in Congress and the bureaucrats in Washington, not President Obama," Frank Luntz wrote in a memo to GOP lawmakers. "Every time we test language that criticized the president by name, the response was negative, even among Republicans."

Castellani said Obama "puts things in a way that very much resonates with public sentiment."

Tax policy for multinational companies "is a very complex issue," he said. "It's incumbent upon us to make it simpler."

 

[Statorama]

Do you own a house, Stat?

A bank owns the house, but I'll own it a few years from now.Thanks for caring :(

 

[TheFanatic]

Buisiness Community frightened by Obama rhetoric

Obama's barbed words worry corporate world

"It is traditional class-warfare rhetoric," said Jade West, a lobbyist for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors. "It's a little bit frightening."

Wait, now Lobbyists are good? These are the people we should be listening to when it comes to judging presidential politics? :(

 

[bostonfred]

Do you own a house, Stat?

A bank owns the house, but I'll own it a few years from now.Thanks for caring

Do you have enough cash and/or invested to be able to pay off your mortgage outright?

 

[Statorama]

Do you own a house, Stat?

A bank owns the house, but I'll own it a few years from now.Thanks for caring

Do you have enough cash and/or invested to be able to pay off your mortgage outright?

Hadn't really considered it. We're able to make double mortgage payments each month without it affecting our quality of life, so we haven't really explored paying it off all at once.(is this the part where you say that you're a Nigerian Prince and you can help me pay off my house?)(and no, I am not interested in selling Amway products)

 

[Statorama]

Time Magazine - Obama practicing same politics he campaigned against

In his Inaugural address, Barack Obama summoned Americans to a "new era of responsibility" and challenged us to end the politics of "standing pat ... and putting off unpleasant decisions." It could have happened. If there was ever a President sitting on a high enough mountain of political capital to lead the country through a series of very painful but necessary political decisions, it is Obama. But sadly, that new era has so far been a promise unfulfilled. The Obama Administration's strategy has been no more than an effective execution of politics as usual, wrapped in more, not less, of the intellectually dishonest language that he so effectively campaigned against.

The sacred cows that voted Democratic last November are mooing more happily than ever. Big Labor is making no sacrifices. Nuclear power plants spew no CO[subscript 2] into the air and consume no foreign oil, yet a serious effort to build new ones is missing from the Obama energy plan because it offends the environmental left. Health-care reform will be massively expensive, yet the trial lawyers' lobby is not being asked to endure the cost savings that tort reform would bring to health insurance. The teachers' unions are unscathed as billions in new spending is poured into public education. Costly--and popular--farm subsidies are untouched (except for those painlessly targeted at "rich" farmers).

Obama's defenders will point to the concessions the Administration forced Detroit's autoworkers to make in the arranged-bankruptcy negotiations with Chrysler. It is true that the United Auto Workers (UAW) got less than it asked for. But without Obama's billions in auto subsidies, it would have gotten far less from insolvency. The children of nonunionized American autoworkers in Kentucky and Alabama who build cars that succeed in the marketplace made the largest concessions. They will endure a larger national debt so that billions of federal dollars can be used to prop up the UAW jobs of far less successful autoworkers in Michigan, Ohio and Ontario.

Instead of meddling in the management of domestic auto companies, Obama should use his immense political capital to make a policy decision that no recent President has shown the guts to make but that would be greatly in the national interest. A stiff new gas tax, phased in as the economy strengthens, would push new-car demand toward more fuel-efficient vehicles just as the U.S. market for cars improves and auto production ramps back up. That would both stimulate the market for new cars and help curb our self-defeating addiction to buying oceans of oil from countries that wish us ill. It would be unpopular, of course, but many responsible things are. Revenues from such a gas tax might also help Obama stop being so, well, irresponsible about how to pay for his "new era of responsibility."

As presented, the Obama budget formula is a work of art, if the goal is to slyly practice the very sort of dissembling politics that Obama ran against. The middle class is promised both a trillion-dollar avalanche of appealing new spending and, in the President's words, a "tax cut--for 95% of working families." Call it the audacity of sophistry. If, as the President claims, his election was a mandate for a larger public sector, then would not the honest and responsible move be to ask everybody to pay at least a little bit more? Is a taxpayer making $95,000 a year such a delicate Fabergé egg that he or she cannot chip in an extra $750 a year to help pay for this huge new public sector and all the benefits it promises?

The real bankrollers of Obama's budget plans come directly from the old political playbook: First, future generations of Americans, who will face our tripled national debt. Second, those reliable villains favored by every Democratic speechwriter, "the top 2%," namely Americans with incomes of $250,000 or more, who already pay nearly half of all federal income taxes. Not to mention our Chinese creditors, who hold huge piles of likely-to-be-inflated and therefore less valuable U.S. dollars.

As for practical politics, I must say Obama's approach is a bag of political tricks perfectly designed to capture Democratic success at the ballot box in 2012. But it has nothing to do with the best parts of his presidential campaign. It seems the first of those postponed "unpleasant decisions" Obama cited in his Inaugural speech is the one to make the political sacrifices his promises demand.

 

[Statorama]

American Hospital Association President calls out Obama on his lies to the public

The president of the American Hospital Association said Thursday that a deal with the White House to cut the growth in health care spending has been “spun way away from the original intent.”

President Barack Obama described the agreement this week with six major health care organizations as a “watershed event,” hailing what the White House said was their promise to reduce spending by 1.5 percentage points annually for a decade, which he said could save as much as $2 trillion over that span.

But in a conference call Thursday, President Richard Umbdenstock told 230 member organizations that the agreement had been misrepresented. The groups, he said, had agreed to gradually ramp up to the 1.5 percentage-point target over 10 years — not to reduce spending by that much in each of the 10 years.

“There has been a tremendous amount of confusion and frankly a lot of political spin,” Umbdenstock said on the call. “And I want to assure you that the American Hospital Association is at the table and a responsible part of this, but that we’ve been very clear on what we have committed to.”

The conference call was first reported Thursday by Modern Healthcare and confirmed by an AHA spokesman.

Umbdenstock said AHA joined the process late and did so as a way to maintain involvement in the health care talks while also avoiding the appearance that it did not support reform.

A White House aide said there was always an understanding among these groups that they would trim the growth rate by 1.5 percent annually to save $2 trillion. Umbdenstock spoke with White House Health Director Nancy-Ann DeParle Thursday, said the aide, who added that all the groups remain "enthusiastic" about the project.

The comments from Umbdenstock cap a week in which some in the Washington health care world struggled to make sense of the surprise White House announcement Monday. The group of six organizations with a major stake in health care — the Service Employees International Union, the American Medical Association, America’s Health Insurance Plan, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association, the American Hospital Association and Advanced Medical Technology Association — had been working in secret for several weeks on a savings plan.

But they learned late last week that the White House wanted to go public with the coalition. One health care insider said: “It came together more quickly than it should have." A health care lobbyist said the participants weren’t prepared to go live with the news over the weekend, when the news of a deal, including the $2 trillion savings claim, was announced by White House officials to reporters. The fact sheet they distributed at the time offered general categories from which the savings would come but few specifics on how they would be achieved.

“This was all a general commitment to be part of bending the cost curve and nobody had specifics and all of sudden right before the weekend hit they said, ‘Get us a list of their specifics,’” the lobbyist said. “What really did come last minute at the end of the week was the White House looking for specific things that these people think would reduce costs.”

But when the day came to announce the offer, representatives from all six organizations were lined up next to the president as he announced the deal.

 

[Statorama]

Obama breaks 4 pledges for aid to Africa

Compassion.

By Mike Pflanz in Nairobi

Published: 2:50PM BST 18 May 2009

Barack Obama 'breaks four aid pledges for Africa'

US President Barack Obama has broken four campaign promises on overseas aid and risks reversing the successes of the Bush administration, HIV-Aids activists have claimed.

Key pledges to boost money for Aids funds, education programmes and poverty-reduction schemes have all been missed, the Global Aids Alliance (GAA) said.

The Washington-based organisation said that figures from Mr Obama's May 7 budget request to the US Congress set the administration on a path to breaking its campaign promises to the people of Africa.

A pledge to spend £4.3 billion on bilateral Aids programmes under the Mr Obama's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) has been shaved back to £3.3 billion.

Mr Obama had also promised to contribute about £1.8 billion on the Global Fund to fight Aids, tuberculosis and malaria, but his budget request fell short by £1.2 billion, the GAA said.

It calculated that this meant that one million people will not receive treatment for HIV, and 2.9 million women will miss out on services to help prevent passing the virus to their unborn children.

"Underfunding these critical programmes has grave consequences, especially during the current global economic crisis," said Paul Zeitz, director of the GAA, speaking in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

"President Obama has a moral obligation to demonstrate global leadership on behalf of the poorest and most marginalised people of the world, especially in Africa.

"But by turning his back on those needs, the President is betraying the trust of tens of millions of people around the world."

The two other broken promises related to stalling promised payments to fund education, and failing to increase foreign aid as a whole by a rate which will allow the president to meet his commitment to double such assistance by 2012.

 

[Running with scissors]

Huh. I didn't realize that this thread had turned into all Statorama, all the time.

 

[Statorama]

Huh. I didn't realize that this thread had turned into all Statorama, all the time.

eh, it keeps me out of trouble.Obama's budget saving fibs

$4 Trillion in Exaggerated Savings

By Maya MacGuineas

On two separate issues -- health-care and the budget -- the president has promised savings of $2 trillion. A total of $4 trillion dollars -- now that's real money. Unfortunately, the claims are completely exaggerated.

First, take health care. Recently, a collection of industry groups came to Washington for a meeting and photo-op with the president. News headlines trumpeted their pledge to save $2 trillion over the next decade -- headlines that were not surprising given that President Obama said, "over the next 10 years -- from 2010 to 2019 -- they are pledging to cut the rate of growth of national health care spending by 1.5 percentage point each year -- an amount that's equal to over $2 trillion. Two trillion dollars."

Turns out that's not what the groups said at all. In their letter to Obama, they promised to "do our part to achieve your Administration's goal of decreasing by 1.5 percentage points annual health-care spending growth rate -- saving $2 trillion or more." Of course, their part of that savings may be significantly less than the full $2 trillion. The groups offered no further specifics. And, anyway, there would be no way to enforce such a hazy commitment. The administration, I'm told, understood this, but the president and others apparently chose to convey a much more optimistic message.

And then there's the budget. Administration officials have argued that they recognize the importance of getting an unsustainable situation back to a manageable level once the economy has recovered. How do they propose doing this? They would cut $2 trillion out of the budget -- a promise that has become one of their favorite talking points.

But in budgeting, "savings" all depends on where you begin. In order to come up with $2 trillion savings, the Office of Management and Budget makes a lot of assumptions that don't reflect the real world or standard budget conventions.

They assume that all of President Bush's tax cuts -- slated to expire at the end of 2010 -- would continue indefinitely. They then factor in a repeal of the tax cuts going to families making over $250,000. And voila: $600 billion in savings. Except that extending a law only to repeal it doesn't really help the bottom line.

They also assume that the war in Iraq would continue at a greater intensity than the president supports (or even President Bush supported). And then they make a show of deflating the pumped up Iraq spending for a "savings" of more than $1 trillion.

Another $300 billion of OMB's "savings" comes from interest payments that are little more than accounting gimmicks.

The frustrating thing here is that I believe Obama is truly concerned about the country's fiscal situation. He has surrounded himself with brilliant economic thinkers who share his concerns about excessive deficit spending. And he takes every opportunity to remind us of the importance of balancing the books. Just last week, he pivoted from a question about increasing Social Security benefits to say:

But what is true about the budget -- is absolutely true -- is that we can cut programs, we can eliminate waste, we can eliminate abuse, we can eliminate earmarks; we could do all that stuff, and we're still going to have a major problem, because Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the national debt. And so I have said before and I will repeat again that my administration is going to seek to work with Congress to execute serious entitlement reform that preserves a safety net for our seniors, for people with disabilities, but also puts it on a firmer, stable footing so that people's retirements are going to be secure not just for this generation, but also for the next generation. And that's going to be hard work. It's going to require some tough choices, but I'm going to need support of the American people to get that done.

That response, emphasizing the need to cut entitlement spending instead of expanding it, is exactly the right point to make. (Though, at the same time, he's creating a huge new health-care entitlement.)

It's easy to understand the bind Obama is in. Being more direct about the policies required to fix the budget is politically perilous. But meaningful deficit reduction will involve real sacrifices -- of the sort you can't spring on the public all of a sudden. The president should be laying the foundation for what's to come.

 

[Statorama]

Obama decides who is and isn't running in the NY Senate Race

Confusion, conflict mar Gillibrand's run

Brian Tumulty

Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's effort to squelch plans by a New York congressman to run in next year's Democratic primary against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand apparently succeeded.

In fact, the president's call to Rep. Steve Israel asking him not to run may rank as a pivotal moment in Gillibrand's effort to hang onto her seat.

But Obama's phone call also has angered members of the state's congressional delegation, who see it as heavy-handed intrusion reminiscent of Tammany Hall party machine politics.

The behind-the-scenes maneuvering has the makings of a political soap opera with some lawmakers feeling pressured to endorse early, some dissatisfied with Gillibrand's views on key liberal issues, and some too upset to even break bread together.

Some delegation members say Gillibrand made things worse by calling fellow Democrats and citing White House support as a reason to endorse her.

"The pressure is nearing a fever pitch," said Rep. Jose Serrano of the Bronx, one of about 10 New York House members who are unwilling to support Gillibrand. "That is not the way the party should be behaving."

But in the last week, other prominent Democrats, advocacy groups and labor unions have endorsed Gillibrand, a former House member from the Hudson Valley appointed to the Senate in January by Gov. David Paterson.

Gillibrand said she has sought support from fellow congressional lawmakers and others, but said she didn't think her re-election bid has split the delegation.

"I wouldn't characterize it as a division, actually," Gillibrand said. "You know, it's very, very early, and for a lot of people an endorsement is something they like to do closer to an election."

Among those unwilling to support Gillibrand are the entire congressional delegation from Long Island, where Israel is from, and upstate Reps. Eric Massa of Corning, Louise Slaughter of Fairport and Paul Tonko of Amsterdam. Most, however, won't publicly criticize Gillibrand. Massa won't even discuss whether Gillibrand has called him.

"When I ran both times, my party did not endorse me until five months before the election," he said.

Slaughter, who endorsed Caroline Kennedy for the Senate seat before Paterson appointed Gillibrand in January, doesn't plan to make an endorsement until next year.

"I'm getting calls from her, but I've made it clear I am not going to endorse this year," Slaughter said. "I've got local races I have to work on."

To date, eight House members and Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer have endorsed Gillibrand. The group includes two New York City lawmakers - Reps. Yvette Clarke and Michael McMahon - upstate Reps. Brian Higgins of Buffalo and Mike Arcuri of Utica, and Hudson Valley Reps. John Hall, Nita Lowey and Scott Murphy.

Assemblyman Peter Rivera, an early critic of Gillibrand's appointment to the Senate, also has endorsed her, as have Emily's List and NARAL Pro-Choice New York.

"It's almost as if they want to put this away a year ahead of time," Serrano said. "I think the fear is that she could be defeated in a primary. There was an unwritten rule around here that the party never got involved in primaries."

'That's hardball'

Serrano offered his name this past week as a potential candidate to oppose Gillibrand in the Democratic Senate primary if no one else steps forward. And Rep. Carolyn Maloney of Manhattan confirmed Thursday she "absolutely" is considering a primary bid against Gillibrand.

Maloney has hired a fundraiser and is backed by some members of the New York delegation.

Meanwhile, Gillibrand supporters are asking campaign donors not to give money to any potential primary opponents, according to Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of Mineola.

"That's hardball," McCarthy said. "Basically, they are cutting off the funding."

The infighting highlights the unrest among some liberal lawmakers about Gillibrand's position on immigration and guns during the two years she represented the rural, Republican-leaning 20th Congressional District before being appointed to the Senate.

Since her appointment, Gillibrand has downplayed her earlier pro-Second Amendment position on guns in favor of support for gun safety. And she's dropped her criticism of illegal immigrants in favor of a position that emphasizes the need to reduce the backlog of citizenship applications. That's not good enough for Serrano and some other delegation members.

"I endorse based on what you've done," he said. "She was anti-immigrant and pro-gun."

McCarthy, a nurse elected to Congress as an anti-gun advocate after her husband was fatally shot and her son wounded by a gunman on the Long Island Railroad, has refused to accept Gillibrand's turnabout on gun issues.

Although Gillibrand has asked her to lunch in a couple of phone calls, McCarthy has declined.

"To be honest, I'm not ready to sit down with her," McCarthy said. "I'll know when the time is right."

Amid the confusion, Israel said: "The only thing I know for sure is I won't be in the primary."

Israel steps out

Israel, a five-term lawmaker from Long Island, officially dropped his plans to run on May 15. He made his decision after getting the call from Obama earlier that day on his cell phone.

Israel was in a car returning to his home in Dix Hills from LaGuardia Airport after finishing his work week in the nation's capital.

"He made an appeal for party unity," Israel said, adding that he "really felt quite flattered" that the president would call.

The May 15 call came two days after Israel met at the White House with Rahm Emanuel, a former House colleague and Obama's chief of staff, who made the initial White House effort to talk Israel out of running for Senate.

"Rahm was pitching him on his prospects here in the House," said Jack Pratt, Israel's chief of staff.

Israel was five days away from announcing his intention to run for Senate, an announcement he planned to make on the Web, using the same strategy former Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton used to announce her candidacy for president.

Israel had pledges from many of the other 25 Democrats in the state's House delegation to either endorse him or withhold an endorsement of Gillibrand through the end of this year. Israel also talked with Schumer about his plans to run for the Senate, but he didn't win Schumer's support. In fact, Schumer said he called the White House to seek Obama's support for Gillibrand's re-election.

"Sen. Gillibrand is the incumbent senator," Schumer said. "I'm trying to help her be as effective as possible.

"I'm not, you know, a heavy-handed type person. I'm not going to muscle people out. I don't believe in doing that in New York. But I think she is doing a good job. I'm helping her."

 

[AnonymousBob]

strongly approve [ 96 ] ** [22.27%]

mildly approve [ 87 ] ** [20.19%]

mildly disapprove [ 69 ] ** [16.01%]

strongly disapprove [ 155 ] ** [35.96%]

neutral/no opinion [ 24 ] ** [5.57%]

 

[Maurile Tremblay]

Last week, Obama signed four more bills without first posting them on the web for five days, as he promised during his campaign.

 

[adonis]

Last week, Obama signed four more bills without first posting them on the web for five days, as he promised during his campaign.

 

[StrikeS2k]

Last week, Obama signed four more bills without first posting them on the web for five days, as he promised during his campaign.

Hope and Change Baby!!!!! Hope and Change!

 

[Statorama]

Last week, Obama signed four more bills without first posting them on the web for five days, as he promised during his campaign.

(all kidding aside, this is actually the kind of thing I'm disappointed with about Obama. I bought into the BS that he would make these kinds of things transperant, which I found to be a very refreshing idea. I hadn't really ever heard a candidate for President say he'd do something like that. If Obama could get that started, and get the people used to having that kind of access, every subsequent president would have to continue doing it. We wouldn't tolerate anything less. With his popularity, Obama has the opportunity to usher in a new era of governmental responsibility to the people and he's just not keeping up his end of the bargain.)

 

[adonis]

Last week, Obama signed four more bills without first posting them on the web for five days, as he promised during his campaign.

(all kidding aside, this is actually the kind of thing I'm disappointed with about Obama. I bought into the BS that he would make these kinds of things transperant, which I found to be a very refreshing idea. I hadn't really ever heard a candidate for President say he'd do something like that. If Obama could get that started, and get the people used to having that kind of access, every subsequent president would have to continue doing it. We wouldn't tolerate anything less. With his popularity, Obama has the opportunity to usher in a new era of governmental responsibility to the people and he's just not keeping up his end of the bargain.)

True enough.ETA: I'm disappointed he hasn't done it yet but I still hold out hope that somewhere halfway into his presidency he'll turn to more transparent government. Possibly, he thinks it's best to go ahead with what he wants to get pushed through, without the headaches of a public debate on it, or more resistance than necessary, and later on he'll open things up. I don't like it, it's not what he promised, but if he does open it up halfway through, I'll give him partial credit.

 

[Statorama]

Last week, Obama signed four more bills without first posting them on the web for five days, as he promised during his campaign.

(all kidding aside, this is actually the kind of thing I'm disappointed with about Obama. I bought into the BS that he would make these kinds of things transperant, which I found to be a very refreshing idea. I hadn't really ever heard a candidate for President say he'd do something like that. If Obama could get that started, and get the people used to having that kind of access, every subsequent president would have to continue doing it. We wouldn't tolerate anything less. With his popularity, Obama has the opportunity to usher in a new era of governmental responsibility to the people and he's just not keeping up his end of the bargain.)

True enough.ETA: I'm disappointed he hasn't done it yet but I still hold out hope that somewhere halfway into his presidency he'll turn to more transparent government. Possibly, he thinks it's best to go ahead with what he wants to get pushed through, without the headaches of a public debate on it, or more resistance than necessary, and later on he'll open things up. I don't like it, it's not what he promised, but if he does open it up halfway through, I'll give him partial credit.

(He's got time. I think it would be really cool to see a President do that in my lifetime.)

 

[FUBAR]

ETA: I'm disappointed he hasn't done it yet but I still hold out hope that somewhere halfway into his presidency he'll turn to more transparent government. Possibly, he thinks it's best to go ahead with what he wants to get pushed through, without the headaches of a public debate on it, or more resistance than necessary, and later on he'll open things up. I don't like it, it's not what he promised, but if he does open it up halfway through, I'll give him partial credit.

Isn't this what every politician says? "I just need to do this for now... I'll meet my promises later... we're just putting Japs into these camps for now... these terrorists will just be held temporarily in Cuba... this won't hurt a bit.... I did not have sexual relations with that woman..." I'm calling on this, you don't break your promises now so you can meet them later. It's like being married, you aren't going to become faithful after your first year of marriage.

 

[LHUCKS]

Foreign Policy: A

Guy is a genius...really gets it IMHO. This topic is why I voted for him as the Iran situation could have really gotten out of control.

Economy/Taxes/Debt: B

Has made some mistakes but for the most part economists believe we have avoided disaster and most of us are still employed. We'll be paying the price for years but that's better for most Americans than a "hard landing". I would have liked to have seen us cut more spending, but I knew it wouldn't happen.

Social Issues: B+

Seems to be okay with the status quo and so am I.

Appointment/Nominations: A

Love the SC nomination, Hillary etc.

Healthcare: D

There are a lot of things the government can do to cut costs...expanding coverage to everyone is not one of them. This problem is complex so I'm hoping my grade gets better with time.

Really, really disappointed about healthcare, but the economy has been a distraction and it's still very early in his first term. I didn't like the fact he was pushing universal healthcare during the peak of the economic crisis.

 

[Statorama]

Foreign Policy: A

Guy is a genius...really gets it IMHO. This topic is why I voted for him as the Iran situation could have really gotten out of control.

Hows North Korea working for you?

 

[Statorama]

ETA: I'm disappointed he hasn't done it yet but I still hold out hope that somewhere halfway into his presidency he'll turn to more transparent government. Possibly, he thinks it's best to go ahead with what he wants to get pushed through, without the headaches of a public debate on it, or more resistance than necessary, and later on he'll open things up. I don't like it, it's not what he promised, but if he does open it up halfway through, I'll give him partial credit.

Isn't this what every politician says? "I just need to do this for now... I'll meet my promises later... we're just putting Japs into these camps for now... these terrorists will just be held temporarily in Cuba... this won't hurt a bit.... I did not have sexual relations with that woman..." I'm calling on this, you don't break your promises now so you can meet them later. It's like being married, you aren't going to become faithful after your first year of marriage.

(this is something I want to see happen so badly that I will give him a year to get his act together and make it happen.)

 

[Statorama]

Obama Offers Prime Posts to Top Campaign Contributors

May 29 (Bloomberg) -- Louis Susman has one thing in common with many of his predecessors nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom: money.

Susman, 71, a retired Citigroup Inc. senior investment banker, raised between $200,000 and $500,000 for President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and another $300,000 for his inauguration. On Wednesday, Obama nominated Susman to the post formally known as the Court of St. James.

Like Andrew Mellon, Joseph Kennedy and Walter Annenberg before him, Susman’s credentials stem more from involvement in financing party politics than foreign policy experience.

Even with his pledges to change government, Obama is following the tradition of his predecessors by offering some ambassadorships to top campaign backers, including four of the 12 nominations this week. The president acknowledged in a news conference in January that donors might get plum postings.

“The practice of rewarding donors is a remnant of the spoils system that we abolished in the civil service,” said career diplomat Ronald Neumann, president of the American Academy of Diplomacy and a former ambassador to Afghanistan. “It is a dismal testimony to the importance of money in our electoral system.”

“That said, the republic will survive the president selling a few embassies.”

Reagan Appointment

Susman is a former vice chairman of corporate and investment banking at Citigroup. He was finance chairman for John Kerry’s 2004 Democratic presidential campaign and raised money for the presidential runs of Senators Edward Kennedy and Bill Bradley.

Besides Susman, those nominated on May 27 include:

-- John Roos, chief executive officer of the Palo Alto, California-based law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, to Japan. He raised more than $500,000 for Obama.

-- Charles Rivkin, chief executive officer of Wildbrain Inc., to France. Rivkin collected more than $500,000 for Obama’s campaign and $300,000 for his inauguration.

-- Laurie Fulton, a partner with Williams & Connolly LLP, to Denmark. Fulton, 59, raised $100,000 to $200,000.

 

[Statorama]

Voter intimidation ok....as long as you're doing it for Obama

Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews.

The incident - which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube - had prompted the government to sue the men, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial slurs and military-style uniforms.

Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an affidavit from a prominent 1960s civil rights activist who witnessed the confrontation and described it as "the most blatant form of voter intimidation" that he had seen, even during the voting rights crisis in Mississippi a half-century ago.

The lawyers also had ascertained that one of the three men had gained access to the polling place by securing a credential as a Democratic poll watcher, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Washington Times.

The career Justice lawyers were on the verge of securing sanctions against the men earlier this month when their superiors ordered them to reverse course, according to interviews and documents. The court had already entered a default judgment against the men on April 20.

A Justice Department spokesman on Thursday confirmed that the agency had dropped the case, dismissing two of the men from the lawsuit with no penalty and winning an order against the third man that simply prohibits him from bringing a weapon to a polling place in future elections.

The department was "successful in obtaining an injunction that prohibits the defendant who brandished a weapon outside a Philadelphia polling place from doing so again," spokesman Alejandro Miyar said. "Claims were dismissed against the other defendants based on a careful assessment of the facts and the law."

Mr. Miyar declined to elaborate about any internal dispute between career and political officials, saying only that the department is "committed to the vigorous prosecution of those who intimidate, threaten or coerce anyone exercising his or her sacred right to vote."

Court records reviewed by The Times show that career Justice lawyers were seeking a default judgment and penalties against the three men as recently as May 5, before abruptly ending their pursuit 10 days later.

People directly familiar with the case, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of fear of retribution, said career lawyers in two separate Justice offices had recommended proceeding to default judgment before political superiors overruled them.

Tensions between career lawyers and political appointees inside the Justice Department have been a sensitive matter since allegations surfaced during the Bush administration that higher-ups had ignored or reversed staff lawyers and that some U.S. attorneys had been removed or selected for political reasons.

During his January confirmation hearings, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that during his lengthy Justice Department tenure, the career lawyers were "my teachers, my colleagues and my friends" and described them as the "backbone" of the department.

"If I am confirmed as attorney general, I will listen to them, respect them and make them proud of the vital goals we will pursue together," he said.

Justice officials declined to say whether Mr. Holder or other senior Justice officials became involved in the case, saying they don't discuss internal deliberations.

The civil suit filed Jan. 7 identified the three men as members of the Panthers and said they wore military-style uniforms, black berets, combat boots, battle-dress pants, black jackets with military-style insignias and were armed with "a dangerous weapon"and used racial slurs and insults to scare would-be voters and those there to assist them at the Philadelphia polling location on Nov. 4.

The complaint said the three men engaged in "coercion, threats and intimidation, ... racial threats and insults, ... menacing and intimidating gestures, ... and movements directed at individuals who were present to vote." It said that unless prohibited by court sanctions, they would "continued to violate ... the Voting Rights Act by continuing to direct intimidation, threats and coercion at voters and potential voters, by again deploying uniformed and armed members at the entrance to polling locations in future elections, both in Philadelphia and throughout the country."

To support its evidence, the government had secured an affidavit from Bartle Bull, a longtime civil rights activist and former aide to Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign. Mr. Bull said in a sworn statement dated April 7 that he was serving in November as a credentialed poll watcher in Philadelphia when he saw the three uniformed Panthers confront and intimidate voters with a nightstick.

Inexplicably, the government did not enter the affidavit in the court case, according to the files.

"In my opinion, the men created an intimidating presence at the entrance to a poll," he declared. "In all my experience in politics, in civil rights litigation and in my efforts in the 1960s to secure the right to vote in Mississippi ... I have never encountered or heard of another instance in the United States where armed and uniformed men blocked the entrance to a polling location."

Mr. Bull said the "clear purpose" of what the Panthers were doing was to "intimidate voters with whom they did not agree." He also said he overheard one of the men tell a white poll watcher: "You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker."

He called their conduct an "outrageous affront to American democracy and the rights of voters to participate in an election without fear." He said it was a "racially motivated effort to limit both poll watchers aiding voters, as well as voters with whom the men did not agree."

The three men named in the complaint - New Black Panther Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz, Minister King Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson - refused to appear in court to answer the accusations over a near-five month period, court records said.

Justice Department Voting Rights Section Attorney J. Christian Adams complained in one court filing about the defendants' failure to appear or to file any pleadings in the case, arguing that Mr. Jackson was "not an infant, nor is he an incompetent person as he appears capable of managing his own affairs, nor is he in the military service of the United States."

Court records show that as late as May 5, the Justice Department was still considering an order by U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell in Philadelphia to seek judgments, or sanctions, against the three Panthers because of their failure to appear.

But 10 days later, the department reversed itself and filed a notice of voluntary dismissal from the complaint for Malik Zulu Shabazz and Mr. Jackson.

That same day, the department asked for the default judgment against King Samir Shabazz, but limited the penalty to an order that he not display a "weapon within 100 feet of any open polling location on any election day in the city of Philadelphia" until Nov. 15, 2012.

Malik Zulu Shabazz is a Washington, D.C., resident.

Mr. Jackson was an elected member of Philadelphia's 14th Ward Democratic Committee, and was credentialed to be at the polling place last Nov. 4 as an official Democratic Party polling observer, according to the Philadelphia City Commissioner's Office.

Efforts to reach the Panthers were unsuccessful. A telephone number listed on the New Black Panthers Web site had been disconnected.

The complaint said that the three men were deployed at the entrance to a Philadelphia polling location wearing the uniform of the New Black Panther Party and that King Samir Shabazz repeatedly brandished a police-style nightstick with a contoured grip and wrist lanyard.

According to the complaint, Malik Zulu Shabazz, a Howard University Law School graduate, said the placement of King Samir Shabazz and Mr. Jackson in Philadelphia was part of a nationwide effort to deploy New Black Panther Party members at polling locations on Election Day.

The New Black Panther Party reportedly has 27 chapters operating across the United States, Britain, the Caribbean and Africa. Its Web page said it has become "a great witness to the validity of the works of the original Black Panther Party," which was founded in 1966 in Oakland, Calif.

 

[Schlzm]

American capitalism gone with a whimper

Snip.

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

Schlzm

 

[Statorama]

All you little people need to continue to make sacrifices. You know, we're in the midst of that so-called economic crisis? Not so for the Obamas

How Obamas' romantic £120 trip to Broadway racked up a £45,000 bill

By David Gardner

Last updated at 9:07 AM on 01st June 2009

...that's for three private jets, two helicopter rides, extra planes for security and closing roads for motorcade It was a campaign pledge that Barack Obama didn't dare break - a promise to take his wife out for dinner and a show once the election was over.

So on the weekend he booked a babysitter, asked Michelle to put on a little black dress and swept her off for a date.

The President picked up the tab for a meal at a low-key restaurant, Blue Hill, that specialises in locally grown dishes.

He had also paid £60 apiece for two tickets to Joe Turner's Come And Gone, a play about a man coming to terms with the history of slavery.

As a little extra, he shelled out for two martinis to toast his first five months in the White House.

Overall, not too extravagant, and few would begrudge the hard-working couple such a treat.

Unfortunately, there were one or two other bills to settle at the end of the night.

The romantic jaunt is estimated to have cost the taxpayer more than £45,000 in transport and security costs - because the date was in New York.

The President used three planes, one to carry the couple and two to ferry aides and reporters all the way from Washington.

The cost of each flight was thought to be nearly £15,000.

The bill was pushed even higher with the use of two helicopters, one to take the Obamas to catch their plane in Washington and another to zip the party into Manhattan from JFK airport.

Police also shut down New York streets for the motorcade to pass through so they could get to their date on time.

All the transport and security costs were picked up by the White House.

But the President was unapologetic, saying: 'I am taking my wife to New York City because I promised her during the campaign that I would take her to a Broadway show after it was all finished.'

In one concession to the tough economic climate, the couple flew on a smaller Gulfstream rather than the

However, Gail Gitcho, of the Republican National Committee, said Mr Obama could just as easily have taken his wife to see a show in Washington for a fraction of the cost.

'If President Obama wants to go to the theatre, isn't the presidential box at the Kennedy Centre good enough?' she said.

The Republican Party slammed the President for taking an extravagant outing at a time when American car giant General Motors is set to plunge into bankruptcy.

'As President Obama prepares to wing into Manhattan's theatre district on Air Force One to take in a Broadway show, GM is preparing to file bankruptcy and families across America continue to struggle to pay their bills,' read the statement issued before the trip.

 

[Statorama]

Press starting to ask questions about Obama promises that aren't being kept

The Obama flip-flops you don't know

By: Alex Conant

June 1, 2009 04:51 AM EST

Since winning the election, President Barack Obama has famously flip-flopped on many of the major issues that he championed on the campaign trail. But did you know he’s also flip-flopped on a myriad of less publicized issues?

This much everybody knows: Even before taking office, Obama broke his promise to not appoint lobbyists to his administration. Since then, he’s abandoned his promises to pay for every dollar of new government spending and bring home all combat troops from Iraq within 18 months. And in recent days, he’s outraged his political base by reversing his earlier commitments to eliminate military tribunals and release photos depicting prisoner abuse.

All those well-publicized reversals have overshadowed the administration’s flip-flops on a host of additional positions. Here are just some of the biggest flip-flops that you may not have noticed:

Osama bin Laden: During the presidential debates last year, Obama declared that capturing or killing Osama bin Laden “has to be our biggest national security priority.” In his first TV interview after winning the election, he said the terrorist leader was “not just a symbol. He’s also the operational leader of an organization that is planning attacks against U.S. targets,” and that the additional troops being sent to Afghanistan would hunt him down because “capturing or killing bin Laden is a critical aspect of stamping out Al Qaeda.”

The Politico 44 Story Widget Requires Adobe Flash Player.

Bin Laden’s significance to Obama dissipated during the transition. By the time Obama gave another interview in early January, he said killing or capturing bin Laden was not necessary to “meet our goal of protecting America.” A few months later, when he announced his Afghanistan troop surge, he made no reference to the hunt for bin Laden.

On human space exploration: Early in his presidential campaign, Obama had great reservations about the costs and risks of human space flight. He said he would delay NASA’s plans to send humans to the moon and, eventually, Mars and, instead, spend that money on education. But, as Florida, Ohio and Texas became more politically important, Obama began to walk back his proposed NASA cuts, promising to fund unmanned space exploration and some other scientific missions.

Now that he’s in office, Obama’s reversal is complete: The White House budget, released earlier this month, provides a healthy increase in NASA funding and explicitly endorses the “goal of returning Americans to the moon and exploring other destinations.”

On the Armenian genocide: In the U.S. Senate and on the campaign trail, Obama firmly declared that the death of 1.5 million Armenians during World War I was “genocide” — a touchy topic between Turks and Armenians and a political priority for Armenian-Americans — and promised that “as president, I will recognize the Armenian genocide.”

Nonetheless, during his recent trip to Turkey as president, Obama broke his promise. Instead, he tried to muddy the waters, announcing that “my views are on the record and I have not changed views” but refusing to state what those views actually are.

On business tax cuts: Even though he unapologetically promised to raise taxes on entrepreneurs (and everybody else) making more than $250,000 per year, Obama offered small businesses some solace by promising several specific tax cuts. One, which became a cornerstone of his campaign’s jobs plan, would eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses. Another, which he proposed as the economy crashed in the waning days of the campaign, would offer businesses a $3,000 tax credit for every employee they hired.

The economy has not improved since Obama’s election, but he nevertheless shelved both proposals: His budget puts off the capital gains tax cut until after his term in office ends and makes no mention of his new-job tax credit.

These four examples only scratch the surface of Obama’s reversals since taking office. Other flip-flops include everything from federally funding needle-exchange programs (which he supported in the campaign but his budget does not), allowing five days of public review before bill signings (he broke the promise with his first bill signing) and ordering the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, recently told POLITICO that “Obama’s governing is completely consistent with the way he campaigned.” A cursory comparison between his campaign promises and administration policies shows that’s not true.

Alex Conant is a communications consultant who served as the Republican National Committee’s national press secretary during the 2008 presidential campaign. Previously, he was a spokesman at the White House and in the U.S. Senate.

 

[Statorama]

Left-wing columnist and Obama supporter calls for Obama resignation

It’s increasingly evident that Obama should resign

THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER

Posted May 29, 2009 @ 12:02 AM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MIAMI — We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.

From health care to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president doesn’t have the nerve to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for work in the morning?

Obama is useless. Worse than that, he’s dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now — before he drags us further into the abyss.

I refer here to Obama’s plan for “preventive detentions.” If a cop or other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, you could be held in “prolonged detention.” Reports in U.S. state-controlled media imply that Obama’s shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, and also kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that made it OK.

In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street.

Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people’s lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can’t control, what George Orwell called “thoughtcrime” — contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action.

Locking up people who haven’t done anything wrong is worse than un-American and a violent attack on the most basic principles of Western jurisprudence. It is contrary to the most essential notion of human decency. That anyone has ever been subjected to “preventive detention” is an outrage. That the president of the United States, a man who won an election because he promised to elevate our moral and political discourse, would even entertain such a revolting idea offends the idea of civilization itself.

Obama is cute. He is charming. But there is something rotten inside him. Unlike the Republicans who backed George W. Bush, I won’t follow a terrible leader just because I voted for him. Obama has revealed himself. He is a monster, and he should remove himself from power.

“Prolonged detention,” reported The New York Times, would be inflicted upon “terrorism suspects who cannot be tried.”

“Cannot be tried.” Interesting choice of words.

Any “terrorism suspect” (can you be a suspect if you haven’t been charged with a crime?) can be tried. Anyone can be tried for anything. At this writing, a Somali child is sitting in a prison in New York, charged with piracy in the Indian Ocean, where the U.S. has no jurisdiction. Anyone can be tried.

What they mean, of course, is that the hundreds of men and boys languishing at Guantánamo and the thousands of “detainees” the Obama administration anticipates kidnapping in the future cannot be convicted. As in the old Soviet Union, putting enemies of the state on trial isn’t enough. The game has to be fixed. Conviction has to be a foregone conclusion.

Why is it, exactly, that some prisoners “cannot be tried”?

The Old Grey Lady explains why Obama wants this “entirely new chapter in American law” in a boring little sentence buried a couple of paragraphs past the jump and a couple of hundred words down page A16: “Yet another question is what to do with the most problematic group of Guantánamo detainees: those who pose a national security threat but cannot be prosecuted, either for lack of evidence or because evidence is tainted.”

In democracies with functioning legal systems, it is assumed that people against whom there is a “lack of evidence” are innocent. They walk free. In countries where the rule of law prevails, in places blessedly free of fearful leaders whose only concern is staying in power, “tainted evidence” is no evidence at all. If you can’t prove that a defendant committed a crime — an actual crime, not a thoughtcrime — in a fair trial, you release him and apologize to the judge and jury for wasting their time.

It is amazing and incredible, after eight years of Bush’s lawless behavior, to have to still have to explain these things. For that reason alone, Obama should resign.

(I agree with most of what Obama did, but I find it funny watching him get bitten by one of his own)

 

[RBM]

Interesting

 

[Statorama]

Say What?

In an interview with Laura Haim on Canal Plus, a French television station, Mr. Obama noted that the United States also could be considered as “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.”

Robert Gibbs: "What the President actually meant by that was...."

 

[Statorama]

Darn near everyone hates Obama's Gitmo plan

New poll results are devastating for Obama's Gitmo plan

By: Byron York

Chief Political Correspondent

06/02/09 2:44 PM EDT

I've gotten a look inside the Gallup poll numbers showing that a majority of Americans oppose shutting down the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay. The numbers are stunning. They show a strong and virtually across-the-board rejection of President Obama's proposal to close the prison.

Overall, 65 percent of those surveyed oppose shutting Gitmo, versus 32 percent who say it should be closed. According to the poll's internal numbers, large majorities of men oppose closing the prison, large majorities of women oppose it, large majorities of white people oppose it, large majorities of non-white people oppose it, people with graduate degrees oppose it, and people who didn't finish high school oppose it. Pretty much everybody.

For Obama, the key numbers are the ones that break down opinion by political party. Ninety-one percent of Republicans oppose shutting Gitmo. Sixty-eight percent of independents oppose it, too. The only group that favors shutting down the prison is Democrats, and that is by a relatively narrow 53 percent to 42 percent margin.

When virtually the entire opposition party, plus 68 percent of independents, plus 42 percent of your own party oppose something you want to do, then you're in trouble.

Another part of the poll asked respondents, "What effect do you think the Guantanamo Bay prison has had on U.S. national security? Overall, 40 percent say the prison has strengthened national security, while 37 percent say it has not had much effect at all. Just 18 percent say the existence of Guantanamo has weakened national security.

Among Republicans, five percent say Gitmo has weakened national security. Among independents, just 14 percent say the same, and among Democrats, just 33 percent say the prison has weakened national security. That means that the overwhelming majority of Americans reject the key argument the Obama White House has put forward for closing Guantanamo -- that it has weakened American national security.

Finally, Gallup asked whether, if Guantanamo were closed, respondents would favor or oppose moving some of the inmates to prisons in their state. No surprises here -- overall, 74 percent oppose having Gitmo detainees come to their state, while just 23 percent favor it. Broken down by party, 94 percent of Republicans oppose it, 78 percent of independents oppose it, and 56 percent of Democrats oppose it.

That is overwhelming opposition, and these results are devastating for the president's plan to shut down Guantanamo.

 

[Statorama]

Obama Plan means loss of American Jobs - Microsoft

Ballmer Says Tax Would Move Microsoft Jobs Offshore

June 3 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steven Ballmer said the world’s largest software company would move some employees offshore if Congress enacts President Barack Obama’s plans to impose higher taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign profits.

“It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said in an interview. “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S.”

Obama on May 4 proposed outlawing or restricting about $190 billion in tax breaks for offshore companies over the next decade. Such business groups as the National Foreign Trade Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable have denounced the proposed overhaul.

U.S. tax rules let companies defer paying corporate rates as high as 35 percent on most types of foreign profits as long as that money remains invested overseas. Obama says he wants to end such incentives to keep foreign profits tax-deferred so that companies would invest them in the U.S.

Microsoft reported an overall effective tax rate of 26 percent for 2008 in its last annual report. “Our effective tax rates are less than the statutory tax rate due to foreign earnings taxed at lower rates,” the report said.

Barry Bosworth, an economist in Washington at the Brookings Institution research center, said many software companies such as Microsoft have exploited tax and trade rules in the U.S. and other countries to achieve a low overall tax rate.

Ireland Subsidiary

Typically, he said, a company like Microsoft develops a product like Windows in the United States and deducts those costs against U.S. income. It then transfers the technology to a subsidiary in Ireland, where corporate tax rates are lower, without charging licensing fees. The company then assigns its foreign sales to the Irish subsidiary so it doesn’t have to claim the income in the United States.

“What Microsoft wants to do is deduct the cost at a high tax rate and report the profits at a low tax rate,” Bosworth said. “Relative to where they are now, the administration’s proposals are less favorable, so there will be some rebalancing on their part.”

Ballmer is one of 10 U.S. software company executives pushing back against the tax proposals in meetings today with White House officials including Jason Furman, deputy director of the National Economic Council, and the heads of congressional committees such as House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat.

Expense Deductions

Among other things, Obama proposed limiting expense deductions such as those for employee compensation when companies defer U.S. tax on foreign profits.

In a roundtable discussion today, Ballmer, Symantec Corp. Chairman John Thompson and the heads of smaller companies such as privately held Bentley Systems, an Exton, Pennsylvania-based maker of engineering software, said such policies would hurt domestic investment, reduce shareholder value and increase the cost of employing U.S. workers.

Ballmer said that, while the Obama proposals would preserve expense deductions related to research and experimentation costs, the overall deduction limits for companies that defer tax on foreign profits would raise the cost of employing U.S. workers. Fiduciary responsibility to shareholders would require Microsoft to cut costs, he said, meaning many jobs would be moved out of the country.

Worldwide Employees

Microsoft employed 95,029 people worldwide as of April 21, of whom 56,552 were based in the United States, according to the company’s Web site. The company announced it was firing up to 5,000 people in January while hiring some new workers; the company has shed about 1,000 jobs since then, spokesman Lou Gellos said.

Ballmer estimated that higher taxes under the proposal would reduce profits for companies that comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average by between 10 and 15 percentage points.

“It’s just a question of how much will the Dow come down,” Ballmer said. “It’s not about companies anyway; we’re talking about shareholders.”

In addition to limiting current deductions for companies that defer U.S. tax on their foreign profits, Obama proposed altering a set of rules known as “check the box” that allow companies to shelter foreign profits in offshore subsidiaries that can be disregarded for U.S. tax purposes.

Duck Liabilities

While the rules were designed in 1997 to protect U.S. companies from paying excessive tax to other governments, Obama administration officials say it has evolved into a way to duck U.S. liabilities. Altering the rule, which Obama dubbed a “loophole,” would generate $86.5 billion in new revenue by 2019, the administration says.

The third international tax proposal would change rules governing how companies can claim tax credits for levies paid to foreign governments. Officials say some companies abuse the rule to accelerate tax credits before they could otherwise be claimed.

Obama has said his proposals would protect or create jobs in the United States.

Thompson of Symantec, the Cupertino, California-based maker of Norton anti-virus software and similar tools, said software companies are frustrated by being called tax cheats and compared with companies that moved their headquarters to low-tax countries such as Bermuda.

‘Counterintuitive’

Thompson called the Obama proposals “counterintuitive” to the administration’s other stated goals of fostering an innovation-oriented economy.

“It is a little bit ironic that most of our most significant trading partners and partners globally have taken the tack that they’ll reduce corporate tax rates to stimulate economic growth and not raise corporate tax rates,” Thompson said.

The roundtable was organized for Bloomberg News by the Business Software Alliance, a Washington trade group coordinating the executives’ meetings with policymakers.

 

[bostonfred]

strongly approve [ 96 ] ** [22.27%]mildly approve [ 87 ] ** [20.19%]mildly disapprove [ 69 ] ** [16.01%]strongly disapprove [ 155 ] ** [35.96%]neutral/no opinion [ 24 ] ** [5.57%]

Your opinion on the job that President Obama is doing so farstrongly approve [ 106 ] [23.30%] mildly approve [ 92 ] [20.22%] mildly disapprove [ 72 ] [15.82%] strongly disapprove [ 161 ] [35.38%] neutral/no opinion [ 24 ] [5.27%] Net increases in the last week:strongly approve 10mildly approve 5mildly disapprove 3strongly disapprove 6neutral/no opinion 0Keep up the good work!

 

[Brutis]

strongly approve [ 96 ] ** [22.27%]mildly approve [ 87 ] ** [20.19%]mildly disapprove [ 69 ] ** [16.01%]strongly disapprove [ 155 ] ** [35.96%]neutral/no opinion [ 24 ] ** [5.57%]

Your opinion on the job that President Obama is doing so farstrongly approve [ 106 ] [23.30%] mildly approve [ 92 ] [20.22%] mildly disapprove [ 72 ] [15.82%] strongly disapprove [ 161 ] [35.38%] neutral/no opinion [ 24 ] [5.27%] Net increases in the last week:strongly approve 10mildly approve 5mildly disapprove 3strongly disapprove 6neutral/no opinion 0Keep up the good work!

I wish I could, it only lets me vote strongly disapprove once.

 

[Gigantomachia]

This guy is good.

 

[Statorama]

Net increases in the last week:strongly approve 10mildly approve 5mildly disapprove 3strongly disapprove 6neutral/no opinion 0Keep up the good work!

New Aliases registered this week: 18Wonder where those votes went?

 

[Statorama]

The Media Fall for Phony 'Jobs' Claims

The Media Fall for Phony 'Jobs' Claims

The Obama Numbers Are Pure Fiction.

By WILLIAM MCGURN

Tony Fratto is envious.

Mr. Fratto was a colleague of mine in the Bush administration, and as a senior member of the White House communications shop, he knows just how difficult it can be to deal with a press corps skeptical about presidential economic claims. It now appears, however, that Mr. Fratto's problem was that he simply lacked the magic words -- jobs "saved or created."

"Saved or created" has become the signature phrase for Barack Obama as he describes what his stimulus is doing for American jobs. His latest invocation came yesterday, when the president declared that the stimulus had already saved or created at least 150,000 American jobs -- and announced he was ramping up some of the stimulus spending so he could "save or create" an additional 600,000 jobs this summer. These numbers come in the context of an earlier Obama promise that his recovery plan will "save or create three to four million jobs over the next two years."

The president should 'save or create' more jobs in Cleveland.

Mr. Fratto sees a double standard at play. "We would never have used a formula like 'save or create,'" he tells me. "To begin with, the number is pure fiction -- the administration has no way to measure how many jobs are actually being 'saved.' And if we had tried to use something this flimsy, the press would never have let us get away with it."

Of course, the inability to measure Mr. Obama's jobs formula is part of its attraction. Never mind that no one -- not the Labor Department, not the Treasury, not the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- actually measures "jobs saved." As the New York Times delicately reports, Mr. Obama's jobs claims are "based on macroeconomic estimates, not an actual counting of jobs." Nice work if you can get away with it.

And get away with it he has. However dubious it may be as an economic measure, as a political formula "save or create" allows the president to invoke numbers that convey an illusion of precision. Harvard economist and former Bush economic adviser Greg Mankiw calls it a "non-measurable metric." And on his blog, he acknowledges the political attraction.

"The expression 'create or save,' which has been used regularly by the President and his economic team, is an act of political genius," writes Mr. Mankiw. "You can measure how many jobs are created between two points in time. But there is no way to measure how many jobs are saved. Even if things get much, much worse, the President can say that there would have been 4 million fewer jobs without the stimulus."

Mr. Obama's comments yesterday are a perfect illustration of just such a claim. In the months since Congress approved the stimulus, our economy has lost nearly 1.6 million jobs and unemployment has hit 9.4%. Invoke the magic words, however, and -- presto! -- you have the president claiming he has "saved or created" 150,000 jobs. It all makes for a much nicer spin, and helps you forget this is the same team that only a few months ago promised us that passing the stimulus would prevent unemployment from rising over 8%.

It's not only former Bush staffers such as Messrs. Fratto and Mankiw who have noted the political convenience here. During a March hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Chairman Max Baucus challenged Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the formula.

"You created a situation where you cannot be wrong," said the Montana Democrat. "If the economy loses two million jobs over the next few years, you can say yes, but it would've lost 5.5 million jobs. If we create a million jobs, you can say, well, it would have lost 2.5 million jobs. You've given yourself complete leverage where you cannot be wrong, because you can take any scenario and make yourself look correct."

Now, something's wrong when the president invokes a formula that makes it impossible for him to be wrong and it goes largely unchallenged. It's true that almost any government spending will create some jobs and save others. But as Milton Friedman once pointed out, that doesn't tell you much: The government, after all, can create jobs by hiring people to dig holes and fill them in.

If the "saved or created" formula looks brilliant, it's only because Mr. Obama and his team are not being called on their claims. And don't expect much to change. So long as the news continues to repeat the administration's line that the stimulus has already "saved or created" 150,000 jobs over a time period when the U.S. economy suffered an overall job loss 10 times that number, the White House would be insane to give up a formula that allows them to spin job losses into jobs saved.

"You would think that any self-respecting White House press corps would show some of the same skepticism toward President Obama's jobs claims that they did toward President Bush's tax cuts," says Mr. Fratto. "But I'm still waiting."

 

[Statorama]

Small thing, but some days Obama's hair is grey, some days it's jet black. Come on man, just go grey and be done with it. pansy.

 

[Statorama]

America's Debt

The next great crisis: America's debt

At this rate, your share of the load will be $155,000 in a decade. How chronic deficits are putting the country on a path to fiscal collapse.

By Shawn Tully, senior editor at large

Last Updated: June 9, 2009: 2:55 PM ET

(Fortune Magazine) -- Normally Paul Krugman, the liberal pundit and Nobel laureate in economics, and Paul Ryan, a conservative Republican congressman from Wisconsin, share little in common except their first names and a scorching passion for views they champion from opposite political poles. So when the two combatants agree on a fundamental threat to the U.S. economy, Americans should heed this alarm as the real thing. What's worrying both Krugman and Ryan is the rapid increase in the federal debt - not so much the stimulus-driven rise to mountainous levels in the next few years, but the huge structural deficits that, under all projections, keep building the burden far into the future to unsustainable, ruinous heights. "The long-term outlook remains worrying," warned Krugman in his New York Times column. Krugman strongly supports President Obama's spending plans but bemoans the shortfall in taxes to pay for them.

Ryan flays the administration for piling new spending on top of already enormous deficits. "This isn't a temporary stimulus but a ramp-up in debt followed by a greater explosion in spending and debt," he told Fortune, predicting a day when America's creditors will start viewing the U.S. Treasury as a risky bet. "The bond markets will come after us with a vengeance. We're playing with fire." Krugman favors far higher taxes, while Ryan wants to curb spending, but for now what's so big and so dangerous that it distresses such diverse types as Krugman and Ryan - and should scare all Americans - is the Great Debt Threat.

The bill is far too big for only the rich to pick up. There aren't enough of them. America will have to lean on citizens far below the $250,000 income threshold: nurses, electricians, secretaries, and factory workers. Within a decade the average household that pays income tax will owe the equivalent of $155,000 in federal debt, about $90,000 more than last year. What the Obama administration isn't telling Americans is that the only practical solution is a giant tax increase aimed squarely at the middle class. The alternative, big cuts in spending, aren't part of the President's agenda. To keep the debt from wrecking the economy, the U.S. would need to raise annual federal income taxes an average of $11,000 in 2019 for all families that pay them, an increase of about 55%. "The revenues needed are far too big to raise from high earners," says Alan Auerbach, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley. "The government will have to go where the money is, to the middle class." The most likely levy: a European-style value-added tax (VAT) that would substantially raise the price of everything from autos to restaurant meals.

The growing debt will burden Americans not just with heavier taxes but also with higher interest rates and slower economic growth. On June 3, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke warned Congress that heavy borrowing is one of the factors driving up rates. The trend is just beginning, according to Allan Meltzer, the distinguished monetarist at Carnegie Mellon. "Rates can only stay low if foreign investors keep buying our debt," he warns. "I predict far higher rates over the next few years." The risk that the U.S. will follow Britain, which was warned recently that it could lose its triple-A bond rating, has risen from virtually nil to a real possibility, judging by the sevenfold jump in the cost of insuring Treasury debt in the past year. The big borrowing is already spooking the bond markets. This year rates on 10-year Treasuries have jumped from 2.2% to 3.7%. A further increase in rates would aggravate the situation, raising the interest costs on the debt and increasing its size even more.

As Krugman and Ryan point out, the problem isn't so much the big budget gaps for this year and next, though their scale is shocking. It's the policies that will allow the trend to become far worse in the future. After the stimulus spending winds down and the economy recovers, our spending will still far exceed our revenues. In 2009 the U.S. will post a deficit of $1.8 trillion, or 13.1% of GDP, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, twice the post-World War II record of 6% in 1983 under Ronald Reagan. Now let's look forward to 2019, the final year for the budget projections for the administration and the CBO. Even in a scenario that assumes healthy economic growth, the CBO puts the 2019 deficit at $1.2 trillion, or 5.7% of GDP. "That wouldn't be a huge number for an economic downturn, but it's extremely high in a full-employment period," says William Gale, an economist at the centrist Brookings Institution. It gets worse from there. Around 2020 the cost of the big entitlements, Social Security and Medicare, soar as the peak wave of baby boomers retire.

It can't go on forever, and it won't. What will shock America into action is the prospect of fiscal collapse, which will grow more vivid each year. In 2008 federal borrowing accounted for 41% of GDP, about the postwar average. By 2019 the burden will double to 82% by the CBO's reckoning, reaching $17.3 trillion, nearly triple last year's level. By that point $1 of every six the U.S. spends will go to interest, compared with one in 12 last year. The U.S. trajectory points to the area that medieval maps labeled "Here Lie Dragons." After 2019 the debt rises with no ceiling in sight, according to all major forecasts, driven by the growth of interest and entitlements. The Government Accountability Office estimates that if current policies continue, interest will absorb 30% of all revenues by 2040 and entitlements will consume the rest, leaving nothing for defense, education, or veterans' benefits.

To understand why a massive tax increase, probably a VAT, is the mostly likely outcome, it's crucial to look at what's driving the long-term, widening gap between revenues and spending. Put simply, spending is following a steep upward curve, while revenues are basically fixed as a portion of GDP. Why? Because future spending is driven mostly by entitlements, which are programmed to rise far faster than national income, while revenues depend heavily on the personal income tax, which yields receipts that typically rise or fall with GDP. Under George W. Bush, the U.S. experienced a prelude to the crisis before us: Spending rose rapidly, while revenues remained reasonably flat. Bush created an expensive new entitlement, the Medicare drug benefit (cost this year: $63 billion), and let spending on domestic programs from education to veterans' benefits run wild. Over seven years the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq added a total of some $900 billion to the budget. All told, Bush raised spending from 18.5% to 21% of GDP, setting in motion a chronic budget gap by piling on new spending without paying for it.

Under Obama the Bush trend keeps going, but this time on steroids. It's important to see the Obama budget projections as two phases, the crisis period of astronomical spending in 2009 and 2010, and the normal phase, from 2011 to 2019. Most of his stimulus and other big programs are designed to give the economy a jolt in 2009 and 2010 and then largely disappear or be offset by tax increases - at least that's the plan. Then the surge in outlays comes from two forces that would wreak budget havoc for any President: the relentless rise in entitlements and the surge in debt interest.

Making the challenge far greater: Obama's budget is packed with a wish list of expensive new programs, led by a giant health-care-reform plan. He promises to pay for them mainly with higher taxes. But if extra revenues don't materialize - and most that he's proposed now look unlikely - will he abandon many of his cherished priorities or push them through without full funding, substantially deepening the debt crisis? The answer could determine how fast America reaches the hour of reckoning that could usher in a VAT.

Let's divide Obama's budget projections into the plausible, the impossible, and the questionable. First, the plausible: It's optimistic but highly possible that spending on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) will fall from more than $500 billion this year to around $20 billion in 2010, and keep declining from there. It's also plausible that the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will fall to around $50 billion a year.

Now the practically impossible: Obama is using a timeworn gimmick by pledging that nonmilitary discretionary spending, outlays that require annual approval, will rise just 2.1% a year from 2012 to 2019. It won't happen. Obama is raising spending in this category, which includes education, health research, and homeland security, a generous 9% in 2009 and 10% in 2010, excluding the stimulus outlays. "It's far more likely the category will match its historical growth rate of around 6.5% a year," says Brian Riedl, an economist with the conservative Heritage Foundation. The GAO says it will rise with GDP, at well over 5%.

Let's examine one of the questionables. Obama's prize initiative - and by far his biggest - is his health-care plan. In his 2010 budget request the President proposes a $635 billion "down payment" or "reserve fund" toward universal health coverage over ten years. As the administration acknowledges, the $635 billion doesn't come close to covering the full expense of the program. Leonard Burman, chief of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, estimates the total cost at $1.5 trillion. Obama plans to offset the down payment from two sources: from limiting deductions for high earners - still another hit to the over-$250,000 crowd - and from squeezing the balance from Medicare through curbing unnecessary hospital stays and ending a plan offering HMO services. Once again, Obama will most likely lose a big part of the revenue he counted on. The limitation on deductions is encountering what looks like fatal opposition in Congress. Obama and his budget director, Peter Orszag, swear that the health-care plan will not worsen the deficit. "We are committed to making sure that health-care reform is deficit neutral," Orszag told Fortune.

The administration's attachment to reform goes far beyond the campaign to provide universal care. Orszag adds, correctly, that unbridled health-care costs, chiefly for Medicare, "are the most important driver of our long-term entitlement problem." Obama is also counting on massive investment in infrastructure to reduce medical costs by spreading electronic record keeping, promoting prevention and wellness, and conducting research to determine the most effective therapies. It's impossible to predict how much money those initiatives would actually save. The administration isn't making a forecast.

Although a VAT seems inevitable, the administration isn't ready to get behind it. "While we are open to ideas to finance health-care reform in a deficit-neutral way," says Orszag, "the VAT is an idea popular with academics, but not one seriously considered by policymakers." The problem, however, is that the income tax simply won't do the job. Closing the budget deficit in 2019 by taxing only people earning more than $250,000 would require lifting their federal marginal tax rates to around 60%. The budget already calls for them to pay, on average, $30,000 more a year than in 2008, with the biggest hit falling on households with income above $500,000. Raising income taxes on all the Americans who pay them wouldn't work either. It would require a 55% increase per household, a political impossibility. The one other major new revenue raiser on the table is a tax on employer-provided health care, but that would merely help pay for a new program to cover the uninsured, rather than closing the deficit.

A VAT, on the other hand, would tax such a giant pool of purchases that a relatively low rate of 10% to 15% could generate the revenues needed to pay for Obama's agenda and balance the budget. The VAT, which would be imposed like a federal sales tax, is paid along the chain of production by wholesalers and retailers. The cost is passed to consumers in the form of higher prices. For the Democrats, the problem with the VAT is that it falls heavily on the middle class and low earners, who use a far higher portion of their incomes to buy things than the rich do. Some of the sting can be removed by exempting food and clothing from the VAT or sending rebates to lower-income households. But the middle class would be a big target in any event. "A lot more people will pay," says Gale. "We cannot get there from here without a VAT."

That brings us back to Krugman and Ryan. Wonder of wonders, they agree again - this time that a VAT is coming. Krugman likes the idea, though he says the middle class will pay more. "There's probably a value-added tax in our future," he writes. Ryan despises the VAT as the beginning of the end of the American empire. "The VAT is definitely the trajectory Obama is putting us on," he laments. Ryan believes that the big growth in government in Europe came from the easy money it provided. He makes a good point. It's not a destiny to be desired. And when the two Pauls agree, you can bet it's where things are headed.

 

[ericttspikes]

American capitalism gone with a whimper

Snip.

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

Schlzm

My 13 year old business grew net 20% last year and we're on pace for 25%+ this year. In recent years flat to 5% was normal.Seems like the people complaining loudest about capitalism "disappearing" are people who have never owned a business in their lives.

 

[Leroy Hoard]

My 13 year old business grew net 20% last year and we're on pace for 25%+ this year. In recent years flat to 5% was normal.Seems like the people complaining loudest about capitalism "disappearing" are people who have never owned a business in their lives.