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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Mon Aug 01, 2011 9:50 pm 
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The Founders and Framers were not writing on a totally blank slate. The British example of a House of Lords (made ascendant in part by George III) and a House of Commons, as well as a strong executive, was something they had dealt with. Here, the individual states, whose legislatures elected Senators, was to be America's version of Lords. And the President, being elected by Electors (who could be presumably influenced by state legislators as well), was an additional brake on pure "democracy."

The problem with our system was that the three branches of Government (don't forget those pesky courts) turned into a really inefficient form of governing. and they still are.

The Republicans have played the "checks and balances" perfectly for many, many years. Whenever the Democrats have been in control of the legislative and executive branches they’ve been stymied by the third branch, including the Chief Justice and the Associates Justices of the United States Chamber of Commerce. Citizens United is just the latest example. But the Renchberg* Court was narrowly construing broad legislative enactments and striking down legislation before the smiling effective head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was appointed to the bench.

The Republicans are great at running elections, fooling poor white people to vote against their interests and obstructing the popular will. Running a country? Not so much.

* Google it.

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Mon Aug 01, 2011 10:17 pm 
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Sterngard Friegen wrote:
The problem with our system was that the three branches of Government (don't forget those pesky courts) turned into a really inefficient form of governing. and they still are.


I disagree on this. I think the inefficiency of the system is completely deliberate, although current circumstances render it even more inefficient than it should be.

The difficulty of changing things quickly, even when that would be preferable, is a conservative mechanism intended to slow change. It may have often blocked progress, such as the filibusters of the major civil rights legislation of the 20th Century. It has also stopped the Republicans from utterly destroying the New Deal even when they were in near total control of the government.

I have many problems with our government and what it does, but that it is not efficient enough is fairly middle of the pack in my long list of complaints.

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 4:23 am 
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The Kind of Deal Democrats Hate
Stephen explains the congressional debt negotiations and resulting budget deal with a "Billy Goats Gruff" metaphor even kids can understand.


And the moral of the story is, when the first goat comes along you have to tear it's head off, have sex with the neck hole, and then mail the carcass back to the brothers and say, "Any of you other goat mother fuckers want to put a hoof on my bridge?"


Yep, that's what we should have done when the first teabagger showed up.

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 6:39 am 
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The Economist: The red and the black: Where federal taxes are raised and spent

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 8:08 am 
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LA Times

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At ease in his natural habitat -- he was a senator for 36 years before moving to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue -- Biden displayed trademark candor behind closed doors. In the same meeting [Monday] with House Democrats, Biden made another comment that could have had more significant consequences on the planned debt-ceiling vote Monday night.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) told reporters that Biden said President Obama "was willing to invoke the 14th Amendment" if the parties could not reach a debt deal by Tuesday's deadline.

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 9:25 am 
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Labor's Discontent With Obama Surfaces Yet Again

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In the immediate aftermath of the announcement Sunday evening that a deal had been struck, the nation's major labor unions bit their tongues, choosing to either carefully craft press statements or remain silent altogether. In private, however, the discontent was palpable. And it wasn't just driven by fear that massive spending cuts –- $26 billion in 2012 and $2.4 trillion over ten years –- would adversely affect workers or the unemployed. It was a touch more personal than that.

"We have now had at least three or more experiences of the president explaining to people that he has a plan and it is under control but the results don't match," said Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union. "He has an unreasonable Congress that doesn't respond to reason. So why continue to reason with them?"

"The sad part so far, which wont be as obscure later, is that everyone talks about spending in the abstract but behind every billion here is kids with disabilities or cities and states that have programs that people rely on," Stern added. "So when the appropriators get to work, I think people will appreciate that all the glee with which we made progress on spending will come up against the question of: at what cost?"

Despite no longer serving as president of his union, Stern's frustrations with the administration are still noteworthy. Among labor leaders, he still enjoys one of the tightest, if not the tightest, relationships with the president and his administration.


The rest is worth reading.

Rest: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/0 ... 15454.html

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 9:40 am 
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Furthermore:

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NEW YORK -- The deficit-reduction deal that emerged late Sunday runs the risk of exacerbating two opposite problems at the same time: It cuts enough government spending to imperil a weak economy, yet not enough to spare the United States from the prospect that its credit rating will be downgraded.

The plan would cut $2.4 trillion in federal government spending over the next decade, an initiative that economists say could harm the economic recovery as growth remains painfully slow. With home prices falling, the unemployment rate rising and gross domestic product expanding at a rate that's worryingly close to zero, federal spending cuts or tax increases could hinder what little progress is being made, experts say.

But seen another way, the deficit-reduction plan might not be big enough: It falls short of the criteria that the credit rating agency Standard & Poor's alluded to last week. Fears that the U.S. government's debt might be downgraded have not been allayed, with some experts saying a downgrade could come this week.

The proposed deal pleased few and left many with a sense of unease. Stimulus programs the federal government still has in place -- unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut -- are set to expire at the end of the year. Under the plan, cuts that start relatively small next year would increase over the course of the decade.


More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/0 ... 15423.html

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  • My friends, it is solidarity of labor we want. We do not want to find fault with each other, but to solidify our forces and say to each other: “We must be together; our masters are joined together and we must do the same thing.”
  • Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.
—Mother Jones


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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 10:26 am 
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President to speak at 12:15 p.m. ET.

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 10:30 am 
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The CNN daily (?) poll today asks: Which group came out on top in the debt-ceiling deal?

Quote:
Democrats 35% 46497
Republicans 34% 44470
Tea party 31% 40532


I think there's a LOT of confusion out there about what's in it, what it means, who benefits, etc.

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 10:37 am 
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Yep Opinions are all over the place, which means the deal was probably, shit as it was in a lot of ways, pithced perfectly in the center and as good as was going to be gotten.

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 10:43 am 
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listeme wrote:
The CNN daily (?) poll today asks: Which group came out on top in the debt-ceiling deal?

Quote:
Democrats 35% 46497
Republicans 34% 44470
Tea party 31% 40532

I think there's a LOT of confusion out there about what's in it, what it means, who benefits, etc.

Isn't it interesting -- in itself -- that the question wasn't...

Which group came out on top: Seniors. Poor. Business. Middle Class. Students. Ultra-wealthy. Working class. Civil servants. Etc.

(Probably "pundits".)

Not that the answers would be any less confused. Or even that there IS an answer. But how inured we have become to the language of this politically polarized climate, that we'd think it would mean ANYTHING to any American to be able to say "Dems won" (or whatever).

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 10:50 am 
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The fact that there was -- had to be -- a "deal" means we all lost.

First, we lost to extortion and the terrorism of the Tea Party. (And enabled it for future extortion.)

Second, we lost an opportunity to keep the fragile recovery going. We insured a lost generation and chronic unemployment for the next decade.

There were no winners. Only losers.

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 11:07 am 
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Sterngard Friegen wrote:
Second, we lost an opportunity to keep the fragile recovery going. We insured a lost generation and chronic unemployment for the next decade.

There were no winners. Only losers.


Corporations win bigtime. What is a "lost generation" to us is, to the corporations, an endless supply of desperate underemployed or unemployed workers, who will take any job, at any price, under any conditions. A plantation nation to exploit to death.

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 11:35 am 
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The Republicans kept saying that we have to bring certainty to the situation so the 'job creators' will stop sitting on their cash reserves and start hiring again. In the meantime, they have allowed the FAA authorization languish causing extensive losses to the Treasury and to many companies and individuals.

Does anyone see any certainty that will encourage these 'job creators' to start creating jobs in this country? Will they repatriate all the reserves that they are reserving offshore? Where's the incentive?

If this is the best deal that could be made, then we are in more trouble than anyone is willing to recognize other than a few economists like Krugman and Reich. Nobody's paying them any mind. Even worse, the situation is so murky that the voters will not be able to figure out who to blame. They will just fall back on their prejudices and government-hating ways.

Timothy Geithner was just on GMA trying to add more sugar on the 'sugar-coated Satan sandwich.' He kept emphasizing the long-term strength and resilience of the US economy. He said he did not expect a double-dip recession. It's too bad he hasn't looked at the curves in the various reports on the economy. We are already in another dip in many sectors. With no extension of benefits or government spending to help the unemployed and millions more without health benefits, no way to save for pensions or children's education, what is going to happen to the work force for the next few decades?

I agree with Stern. There are no winners. We are all losers is this bargain.

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 11:48 am 
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Timothy Geithner was just on GMA trying to add more sugar on the 'sugar-coated Satan sandwich.' He kept emphasizing the long-term strength and resilience of the US economy.


The "need" for a "deal" was an invention by Obama and the Congress. Timmy can suck my toe because I predict within 3 months Timmie will have bailed from the Treasury for a big, fat salary in the private sector. Obama should have dumped Geitner when he shed himself of Rahm.


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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 12:30 pm 
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Politics News Alert: Senate begins vote on debt deal
August 2, 2011 12:18:13 PM
----------------------------------------

Approval would send the measure to President Obama and immediately grant the Treasury $400 billion in additional borrowing authority, just hours before a midnight deadline.

http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/ ... 9G5RI/1G/h

For more information, visit PostPolitics.com.

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 12:41 pm 
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Why on earth is Jake Tapper ABC News' White House Correspondent?

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 12:46 pm 
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74-26 Done


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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 1:14 pm 
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Adelante wrote:
74-26 Done


Much of the President's remarks concerned tax reform, such as addressing tax rates that let billionaires pay lower rates than do nurses and teachers. The Republicans insist that raising taxes is not possible. It will take strength to enact tax reforms. I wonder where that strength will come from, given that it has not been evident over the past several weeks.

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 1:17 pm 
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I was glad to hear him ask that Congress straighten out the FAA debacle before leaving town. They won't, but at least he put it out there.

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 1:21 pm 
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Boxer is on the Senate floor right now trying to get a clean extension for the FAA. How much more of this hostage-taking can we take? This is not just the debt ceiling. Boxer just pointed out 5 other situations where they are holding up progress that would help the recovery.

http://www.c-span.org/Live-Video/C-SPAN2/

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 1:38 pm 
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Suranis wrote:
Yep Opinions are all over the place, which means the deal was probably, shit as it was in a lot of ways, pithced perfectly in the center and as good as was going to be gotten.

If that's the center, I'm the last freakin' Tsar of Russia! :roll:

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  • I know that there are no limits to which the powers of privilege will not go to keep the workers in slavery.
  • My friends, it is solidarity of labor we want. We do not want to find fault with each other, but to solidify our forces and say to each other: “We must be together; our masters are joined together and we must do the same thing.”
  • Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.
—Mother Jones


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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 1:52 pm 
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Interestingly, now that the debt ceiling bill passed and there is certainty to it, Wall Street responded with a distinct slide and gold is up another $22 today. Well, so much for averting global financial disaster. :roll:

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 2:04 pm 
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TollandRCR wrote:
Much of the President's remarks concerned tax reform, such as addressing tax rates that let billionaires pay lower rates than do nurses and teachers. The Republicans insist that raising taxes is not possible. It will take strength to enact tax reforms. I wonder where that strength will come from, given that it has not been evident over the past several weeks.


The trick is to get some of the moderates/independents to believe that it is necessary to raise taxes on the wealthy. If the voters lead, the leaders will follow. (But then, I'm a wide-eyed optimist.)

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 Post subject: Federal Budget
PostPosted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 2:09 pm 
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I think the onion put it best
http://www.theonion.com/articles/democr ... for,21052/

Democrats, Republicans Celebrate Pitiful Excuse For Common Ground

Quote:
WASHINGTON—Following Sunday’s pathetic excuse for an agreement on raising the government’s borrowing limit, Democrats and Republicans took time to celebrate the meager, ineffective deal, calling it “a testament to the not-so-great things that can happen in Washington when both parties barely come together and agree to not really accomplish anything.”

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