Monday, February 1, 2010
One of my Sisters-in-Law Once Asked Me...
"How do you know that...?!?!"
"Easy," I told her; "I read a lot!"
Seriously... I READ... a LOT.
(*SMILE*)
As I noted in my previous post today, I've been quite busy lately. I won't get into specifics here, but suffice it to say I've been doing quite a bit of "work related" research and writing - far more than usual.
Today was actually a LIGHT reading day - at least as far as "today's headline news" is concerned. Frankly, I only had time to peruse four or five different news sites; usually I hit at least ten news sites a day.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not writing this to brag. No, my point is simply that if you wanna... er... know stuff... it helps to read a lot - day in and day out.
Just to give you an idea of the "stuff" I follow day in and day out, I'm going to post my "notes" within the comments section of this thread.
Note: If you do bother to "check out" what I've posted within the comments section, bear in mind... we're talking just a small portion of the reading I do in a single day - and further note, my daily reading isn't all news and it isn't all online. Right now, for instance, I'm reading a new science fiction novel by David Weber while also reading (and taking notes on) "New Deal Or Raw Deal: How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America," by Burton Folsom, Jr.
Anyway... on to the comments section!
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14 comments:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aqLMEUObhysc
Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who anticipated the financial crisis, said the U.S. growth outlook remains “very dismal”... ... after the U.S. reported the fastest growth in six years [Roubini said] “The headline number will look large and big, but actually when you dissect it, it’s very dismal and poor...I think we are in trouble.” Roubini said more than half of the growth was related to a replenishing of depleted inventories and that consumption was reliant on monetary and fiscal stimulus. As these forces ebb, the rate will slow to 1.5 percent in the second half of 2010. “It’s going to feel like a recession even if technically we’re not going to be in a recession,” he said in the interview.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9DJHSR82&show_article=1
President Barack Obama unveiled a multitrillion-dollar spending plan Monday...asking Congress to quickly approve new [spending] that would boost the deficit to a record-breaking $1.56 trillion. [Obama proposes] a budget plan that would give the country trillion-dollar-plus deficits for three consecutive years. Obama's new budget projects a spending increase of 5.7 percent for the current budget year and forecasts that spending would rise another 3 percent in 2011 to $3.83 trillion. [Obama's spending blueprint will] boost the deficit over the next two years by $245 billion. The deficit for this year would surge to a record-breaking $1.56 trillion, topping last year's then-unprecedented $1.41 trillion gap, a number which had dwarfed the previous record of $454.8 billion set in 2008 under former President George W. Bush. The administration is forecasting that deficits over the next decade will add an additional $8.5 trillion to the national debt, even if Congress adopts the administration's package of proposals to trim future deficits starting in 2011. Obama's job proposals would push government spending in 2010 to $3.72 trillion and increase that amount to $3.83 trillion in the 2011 budget year, which begins on Oct. 1. The deficit in 2011 would total $1.27 trillion, the third straight trillion-dollar-plus imbalance. The deficit would fall to $828 billion in 2012 but would remain at levels surpassing any previous deficits through 2020. The deficit for this year would be 10.6 percent of the total economy, a figure unmatched since the country was emerging from World War II. The administration does not trim the deficit below 3.6 percent of GDP for any year in the next decade, failing to meet its goal of lowering the deficit to 3 percent of GDP by 2015.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204575039132987274858.html?mod=WSJ-hpp-LEADNewsCollection
Marginal income tax rates for people with incomes over $200,000, or $250,000 for married couples, will jump from 33% to 36%, or from 35% to 39.6%. Capital gains and dividends will be taxed at 20% rather than 15% for people at those income levels. Limits on upper-income people's ability to claim personal exemptions and itemized deductions will also snap back next year, without any action needed from Congress. Mr. Obama proposed reinstating the estate tax, which was repealed for one year on Jan. 1, at the levels in effect last year - 45% - with an exemption for estate wealth under $3.5 million.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/79039-clyburn-weve-got-to-spend-our-way-out-of-this-recession
The U.S. government must spend its way out of the recession, the Democrats' third-ranking House leader stressed Monday. Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the House majority whip, said that trying to find greater savings in the budget, which was released by President Barack Obama this morning, wouldn't help alleviate the recession. "We're not going to save our way out of this recession," the majority whip added. "We've got to spend our way out of this recession...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7111525/UN-climate-change-panel-based-claims-on-student-dissertation-and-magazine-article.html
The United Nations' expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world's mountain tops on a student's dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine. The revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to issue a humiliating apology earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global warming. In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information. However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them. The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master's degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps. [R]esearchers have expressed exasperation at the IPCC's use of unsubstantiated claims and sources outside of the scientific literature. Professor Richard Tol, one of the report's authors who is based at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, Ireland, said: "These are essentially a collection of anecdotes. The IPCC has faced growing criticism over the sources it used in its last report after it emerged the panel had used unsubstantiated figures on glacial melting in the Himalayas that were contained within a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report. It can be revealed that the IPCC report made use of 16 non-peer reviewed WWF reports.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204575039671922399114.html
As a share of the economy, outlays will reach a post-World War II record of 25.4% this year. This is a new modern spending landmark, up from 21% of GDP as recently as fiscal 2008, and far above the 40-year average of 20.7%. In the "out years" in mid-decade, the White House promises that spending will fall all the way back to 23% of GDP. Even if you choose to believe such a political prediction, that still means Mr. Obama is proposing a new and more or less permanently higher plateau of federal spending. If this budget is Mr. Obama's first clear demonstration of his long-term governing priorities, then it's hard not conclude that this spending boom is deliberate. It is an effort to put in place programs and spending commitments that will require vast new tax increases and give the political class a claim on far more private American wealth. Despite talk of "tough choices" in yesterday's document, the Administration wants $25 billion in new spending for states for Medicaid, $100 billion for yet another jobs "stimulus," big boosts in spending for low-income family programs, for health research, heating assistance and education. If Mr. Obama's priorities become law, federal outlays will have grown an astonishing 29% since 2008. As further proof, the White House proposes to convert long-standing "discretionary" spending that requires annual appropriations into permanent entitlement programs. A case in point is the Pell Grant program for college, which the budget would shift into the "mandatory" spending column at a cost of $307 billion over 10 years. The political goal here is to make a college education as much of a universal entitlement as Social Security. All of this spending must be financed, and so deficits and taxes are both scheduled to rise to record levels. The deficit will hit 10.6% of GDP this year, far more than Ronald Reagan ever dreamed of. [Obama's proposed] deficits are based on assumptions for growth and revenue gains from record tax increases starting January 1, 2011. And what a list of tax increases it is - no less than $2 trillion worth over the decade. [T]he Administration and its economists claim to believe [massive tax increases] will have little or no impact on growth. If they're wrong, the deficits will be even larger. Our favorite euphemism is the Administration's estimate that it can get $122.2 billion in new revenue via a "reform" of the "U.S. international tax system." Reform usually means closing some loopholes in return for lower tax rates. But this is a giant tax increase on American companies that operate overseas, and it includes no offsetting cut in the U.S. 35% corporate tax rate, which is among the highest in the world. The Administration agreed last year to drop this idea when it was seeking the help of the Business Roundtable to pass health care. But so much for that, now that the White House needs the money.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=519747
The latest index of economic freedom shows America falling fast, being ranked for the first time as "mostly free." We've fallen behind Canada, and it's look out below. Our accelerating descent into a command-and-control economy with government pulling the strings is taking its toll. The Heritage Foundation's 2010 index of leading economic indicators shows that the land of the free is only mostly free, falling to eighth in the world from sixth last year, now sandwiched between Canada and Denmark. That Canada, long considered a bastion of socialized medicine, is ranked as economically freer may surprise some. But our neighbor to the north has at least been trying to develop its domestic energy reserves, from hydroelectric to natural gas to oil extracted from its tar sands. Energy is the lifeblood of a free economy. We have shackled our domestic energy producers with environmental regulations, leaving vast pools of energy lying offshore and in the ground. We regulate what you can build, where you can build it, even how. Endangered critters rank above equally endangered entrepreneurs. Climate change is more important than the business climate. We have allowed our government to be the engine of stimulus when the only thing that's being stimulated is government itself. The public sector booms while the private sector languishes as the federal government sucks the financial oxygen out of the room. Businesses are afraid to move because they are unable to plan in an environment where government is trying to tax or regulate everything that moves and most things that don't. Our government has taken upon itself the task of picking winners and losers, instead of letting the free market decide, and as a result we all lose. From car companies to financial institutions, the long arm of government has grabbed freedom by the neck, seeking to decide who gets paid what and how big companies and banks can grow. Then there are the taxes, which are to business what vampires are to blood banks. A nation's corporate tax rate is important. Its effect on a country's competitiveness and its ability to draw or repel investment has a direct impact on economic health. Companies are being driven offshore by a combined 39.1% federal and state tax rate that is second only to Japan's. In some states, the combination leads the world. California, which would have the world's eighth largest economy as an independent country, teeters on bankruptcy. If you were a CEO, would you headquarter there or in Switzerland or Ireland, which also rank above us? The 2010 index shows the U.S. dropping from 80.7 points out of 100 in 2008 to 78 in 2009 and slipping from the "free" category to "mostly free." America's 2.7-point decline is among the fastest ever, ranking right up there with those of such socialist paradises as Bolivia, Libya and Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, whose policies our administration czars are seeking to emulate. The authors of the Heritage report cite the gargantuan growth of government in both size and power, noting that government spending last year equaled 37.4% of GDP. Spending increases totaled well over $1 trillion in 2009 alone, up more than 20% from 2008. On these pages last November, former Microsoft COO Robert Herbold and Hoover Institution fellow Scott Powell noted that "ambiguity and the threat of new taxes from Washington, such as cap-and-trade, have already prompted 11 major U.S. companies to move offshore in the past year." They can be accused of being greedy, but not of being stupid. We must stop bailing out failure and punishing success through regulation and taxation. Only then can the land of the free be economically free to thrive and prosper.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=519774
Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Judicial Watch show that Pelosi has incurred expenses of $2.1 million for her use of Air Force jets the past two years. Then there's the matter of the $101,000 tab taxpayers picked up over that period for "in-flight services," including a selection of top-shelf booze. According to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, Pelosi has used Air Force aircraft to travel back to her district at average cost of $28,210.51 per flight. In 2007, Pelosi was criticized, justifiably, for using a 42-seat Air Force jet to taxi her and her staff from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., and back. Of 103 Pelosi-led congressional delegations, 31 trips included members of the speaker's family. Pelosi has reportedly requested on one occasion the dedicated use of an Air Force C-32, the military version of the Boeing 757-200 commercial jet that costs $22,000 an hour to operate.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=519772
$3.8 trillion dollar federal budget that President Obama announced Monday ... In 2008, government spent 38% of everything produced in the U.S. (gross domestic product) and last year the figure shot above 40%, perhaps as high as 43% though the numbers are still being crunched. When government spends so much, less is left for people to spend as they choose. Only once before in American history did government spending cross that 40% threshold — to wage World War II. Nothing today justifies a similar confiscation of nearly half of people's resources. Amazingly, though the 40% mark is being crossed, politicians continue to propose costly programs that you will have to pay for with the fruits of your labor. I bet no member of Congress has ever asked you: "Would you rather buy something for your family or re-cover your sofa instead of funding National Public Radio? Would you rather make your own car payments instead of bailing out the auto industry or expanding aid to Africa? The real danger to our freedom is the level of spending, not whether it's paid for with taxes now or borrowing. They'll come after you and your children later. What's needed is a cap on overall spending. During the last 18 months, federal spending as a percentage of what the nation produces (gross domestic product) soared to 28% from 20%. Add in state and local government spending, and the result crossed that critical 40% threshold. The president said in his State of the Union message that the federal government must tighten its belt, just the way American families are doing. But his budget proposal increases federal spending by $85 billion. That is belt-loosening. Total government spending in the U.S., as a percentage of GDP, is approaching levels found in social welfare states like France and Germany, where life is highly regulated by the state. Another indicator is the hundreds of thousands of federal employees, with more being hired all the time as private sector workers lose their jobs. This week, Americans need to deliver a clear message in response to the president's budget that they do not want their country to be Europeanized.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm2787.cfm
The President's budget would permanently expand the federal government by nearly 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) over 2007 pre-recession levels; borrow 42 cents for each dollar spent in 2010; run a $1.6 trillion deficit in 2010 - $143 billion higher than the recession-driven 2009 deficit; leave permanent deficits that top $1 trillion in as late as 2020; and double the publicly held national debt to over $18 trillion. Before the recession, federal spending totaled $24,000 per U.S. household. President Obama would hike it to $36,000 per household by 2020. Even the steep tax increases planned for all taxpayers would not finance all of this spending: The President's budget would add trillions of dollars in new debt. After harshly criticizing President Bush for running $3.3 trillion in deficits over eight years, President Obama's budget would run $7.6 trillion in deficits over what would be his eight years in the Oval Office. President Obama would run up more debt over his eight years than all other Presidents in American history - from George Washington through George W. Bush - combined. As a result of these deficits, net interest spending would reach $840 billion in 2020. During his State of the Union speech, the President asserted that "by the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program." This is simply not true. The policies mentioned by President Obama were implemented in the early 2000s. Yet even with all those policies in place, the 2007 budget deficit stood at only $162 billion. The trillion-dollar deficits did not begin until 2009. Under a budget baseline that assumes current policies continue, nearly 90 percent of the expanded budget deficits by 2020 would be caused by higher spending. Last year, Congress and President Obama agreed on $6.9 billon worth of terminations and spending cuts (mostly in defense)--and then plowed 100 percent of the savings into new spending (mostly non-defense). Not a dollar went toward deficit reduction; there is no reason to expect this year will be any different. The President who said, "I didn't come here to pass our problems on to the next president or the next generation, I'm here to solve them" would, over the next decade, pass $75,000 per household in additional debt into the laps of our children and grandchildren. If President Obama is serious about reining in spending and budget deficits, he needs to propose real and specific spending cuts. This means repealing the economic stimulus and TARP, bringing Social Security and Medicare into long-term sustainability, and bringing discretionary spending back to pre-recession levels.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Education/bg2363.cfm
Recently released results from the Head Start Impact Study indicate that the benefits of participating in Head Start almost completely disappear by first grade. While other studies have previously assessed Head Start's effectiveness, this is the only study that used a rigorous experimental design. Given this strongly negative evaluation, Congress should reconsider spending more than $9 billion per year on a program that produces few positive lasting effects. Furthermore, instead of creating yet another new federal preschool program at a cost of $8 billion, Congress and the Obama Administration should focus on terminating, consolidating, and reforming existing preschool and child care programs to better serve children's needs and to improve efficiency for taxpayers.
http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=NTNkMjM0ZTAwMDQ4MmRmYmUwODc0YjRmMTlhNGEyNGM=
Congress passes massive pieces of legislation with little serious deliberation, bills that are written in secret and generally unread before the vote. The national legislature is increasingly a supervisory body overseeing a vast array of administrative policymakers and rulemaking agencies. Although the Constitution vests legislative powers in Congress, the majority of “laws” are promulgated in the guise of “regulations” by bureaucrats who are mostly unaccountable and invisible to the public. The great challenge of democracy, as the Founders understood it, was to restrict and structure the government to secure the rights articulated in the Declaration of Independence — preventing tyranny while preserving liberty. The solution was to create a strong, energetic government of limited authority. Its powers were enumerated in a written constitution, separated into functions and responsibilities and further divided between national and state governments in a system of federalism. The result was a framework of limited government and a vast sphere of freedom, leaving ample room for republican self-government. While the Founders went to great lengths to moderate democracy and limit government, the progressives believed that barriers to change had to be removed or circumvented, and government expanded. The progressives emphasized not a separation of powers, which divided and checked the government, but rather a combination of powers, which would concentrate its authority and direct its actions. While seeming to advocate more democracy, the progressives of a century ago, like their descendants today, actually wanted the opposite: more centralized government control. So it is that today, many policy decisions that were previously the constitutional responsibility of elected legislators are delegated to faceless bureaucrats whose “rules” have the full force and effect of laws passed by Congress. In writing legislation, Congress uses broad language that essentially hands legislative power over to agencies, along with the authority to execute rules and adjudicate violations. The objective of progressive thinking, which remains a major force in modern-day liberalism, was to transform America from a decentralized, self-governing society into a centralized, progressive society focused on national ideals and the achievement of “social justice.” Sociological conditions would be changed through government regulation of society and the economy; socioeconomic problems would be solved by redistributing wealth and benefits. Liberty no longer would be a condition based on human nature and the exercise of God-given natural rights, but a changing concept whose evolution was guided by government. And since the progressives could not get rid of the “old” Constitution — this was seen as neither desirable nor possible, given its elevated status and historic significance in American political life — they invented the idea of a “living” Constitution that would be flexible and pliable, capable of “growth” and adaptation in changing times. The administrative state took off in the mid-1960s with Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. By creating a truly national bureaucracy of open-ended social programs in housing, education, the environment, and urban renewal (most of which, such as the “War on Poverty,” failed to achieve their goals), the Great Society and its progeny effected the greatest expansion of the administrative state in American history. The Great Society also took the progressive argument one step farther, by asserting that the purpose of government no longer was “to secure these rights,” as the Declaration of Independence says, but “to fulfill these rights.” That was the title of Johnson’s 1965 commencement address at Howard University, in which he laid out the shift from securing equality of opportunity to guaranteeing equality of outcome.
Not to be nitpicky but I'm not sure you are using the word "peruse" correctly...unless of course you are reading these 4 or 5 news sites very thoroughly.
Either way, glad to see you back posting.
Cheers.
(*SMILE*)
Er... thanks, Moose.
(*CHUCKLE*)
How's this: I browse "news" (and opinion) from a number of sources which in turn direct me to other sources and upon focusing upon particular reporting and analysis I "peruse" the particular reporting and analysis.
In any case... I like the word "peruse."
(*WINK*)
Moose, what do you think of the "note sharing" concept of this thread? Did you "browse" the comments... did you "peruse" any particular comments and utilize the links to read the full story?
Basically, I'm doing all this work anyway... I'd love to have it benefit others.
BILL
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