Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Monday, October 30, 2006
THE OCTOBER SURPRISE . . . .
can it be -- the GOP spends its wad of campaign money and blitzing with a plan to have the focus go to one of their stronger issues . . . immigration maybe. the seeds were planted for that a couple of weeks ago. we'll soon see.
WARNING OF FISCAL DISASTER -- A MUST READ
Warning of fiscal disasterOfficial takes to road to point out dangers of U.S. financial policyBy
Matt CrensonAssociated PressPublished October 30, 2006
AUSTIN, Texas -- David M. Walker sure talks like he's running for office."This is about the future of our country, our kids and grandkids," the comptroller general of the United States warns a packed hall at Austin's historic Driskill Hotel. "We the people have to rise up to make sure things get changed."But Walker doesn't want, or need, your vote this November. He already has a job as head of the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress that audits and evaluates the performance of the federal government.Basically, that makes Walker the nation's accountant-in-chief. And the accountant-in-chief's professional opinion is that the American public needs to tell Washington it's time to steer the nation off the path to financial ruin.From the hustings and the airwaves this campaign season, America's political class can be heard debating Capitol Hill sex scandals, the wisdom of the war in Iraq and which party is tougher on terror. Democrats and Republicans talk of cutting taxes to make life easier for the American people.What they don't talk about is a dirty little secret everyone in Washington knows, or at least should. The vast majority of economists and budget analysts agree: The ship of state is on a disastrous course, and will founder on the reefs of economic disaster if nothing is done to correct it.There's a good reason politicians don't like to talk about the nation's long-term fiscal prospects. The subject is short on political theatrics and long on complicated economics, scary graphs and very big numbers. It reveals serious problems and offers no easy solutions. Anybody who wanted to deal with it seriously would have to talk about raising taxes and cutting benefits, nasty nostrums that might doom any candidate who prescribed them."There's no sexiness to it," laments Leita Hart-Fanta, an accountant who has just heard Walker's pitch. She suggests recruiting a trusted celebrity--maybe Oprah Winfrey--to sell fiscal responsibility to the American people.Walker doesn't want to make balancing the federal government's books sexy--he just wants to make it politically palatable. He has committed to touring the nation through the 2008 elections, talking to anybody who will listen. He wants them to know about the fiscal black hole Washington has dug itself, the "demographic tsunami" that will come when the Baby Boomer generation begins retiring and the recklessness of borrowing money from foreign lenders to pay for the operation of the U.S. government.He's dubbed his campaign the fiscal wake-up tour. The Illinois stop has not yet been scheduled.To show that the looming fiscal crisis is not a partisan issue, he brings along economists and budget analysts from across the political spectrum. In Austin, he's accompanied by Diane Lim Rogers, a liberal economist from the Brookings Institution, and Alison Acosta Fraser, director of the Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.Their basic message is this: If the United States government conducts business as usual over the next few decades, a national debt that is already $8.5 trillion could reach $46 trillion or more, adjusted for inflation.A hole that big could paralyze the U.S. economy; according to some projections, just the interest payments on a debt that big would be as much as all the taxes the government collects today. And every year that nothing is done about it, Walker says, the problem grows by $2 trillion to $3 trillion.People who remember Ross Perot's rants in the 1992 presidential election may think of the federal debt as a problem of the past. But it never really went away after Perot made it an issue, it only took a breather. The federal government actually produced a surplus for a while during the 1990s, thanks to a booming economy and fiscal restraint imposed by laws that were passed early in the decade. And though the federal debt has grown in dollar terms since 2001, it hasn't grown dramatically relative to the size of the economy.But that's about to change, thanks to the country's three big entitlement programs--Social Security, Medicaid and especially Medicare. Medicaid and Medicare have grown progressively more expensive as the cost of health care has dramatically outpaced inflation over the past 30 years, a trend that is expected to continue for at least another decade or two.And with the first Baby Boomers becoming eligible for Social Security in 2008 and for Medicare in 2011, the expenses of those two programs are about to increase dramatically due to demographic pressures. People are also living longer, which makes any program that provides benefits to retirees more expensive.Medicare already costs four times as much as it did in 1970, measured as a percentage of the nation's gross domestic product. It currently accounts for 13 percent of federal spending; by 2030, the Congressional Budget Office projects it will consume nearly a quarter of the budget.Social Security is a much less serious problem. The program currently pays for itself with a 12.4 percent payroll tax, and even produces a surplus that the government raids every year to pay other bills. But Social Security will begin to run deficits during the next century, and ultimately would need an infusion of $8 trillion if the government planned to keep its promises to every beneficiary.Why is America so fiscally unprepared for the next century? Like many of its citizens, the United States has spent the last few years racking up debt instead of saving for the future. Foreign lenders--primarily the central banks of China, Japan and other big U.S. trading partners--have been eager to lend the government money at low interest rates, making the current $8.5 trillion deficit about as painful as a big balance on a zero-percent credit card.Macroeconomic meltdown is probably preventable, says Anjan Thakor, a professor of finance at Washington University in St. Louis. But to keep it at bay, he said, the government is essentially going to have to renegotiate some of the promises it has made to its citizens, probably by some combination of tax increases and benefit cuts.But there's no way to avoid what Rogers considers the worst result of racking up a big deficit--the outrage of making our children and grandchildren repay the debts of their elders.
Matt CrensonAssociated PressPublished October 30, 2006
AUSTIN, Texas -- David M. Walker sure talks like he's running for office."This is about the future of our country, our kids and grandkids," the comptroller general of the United States warns a packed hall at Austin's historic Driskill Hotel. "We the people have to rise up to make sure things get changed."But Walker doesn't want, or need, your vote this November. He already has a job as head of the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress that audits and evaluates the performance of the federal government.Basically, that makes Walker the nation's accountant-in-chief. And the accountant-in-chief's professional opinion is that the American public needs to tell Washington it's time to steer the nation off the path to financial ruin.From the hustings and the airwaves this campaign season, America's political class can be heard debating Capitol Hill sex scandals, the wisdom of the war in Iraq and which party is tougher on terror. Democrats and Republicans talk of cutting taxes to make life easier for the American people.What they don't talk about is a dirty little secret everyone in Washington knows, or at least should. The vast majority of economists and budget analysts agree: The ship of state is on a disastrous course, and will founder on the reefs of economic disaster if nothing is done to correct it.There's a good reason politicians don't like to talk about the nation's long-term fiscal prospects. The subject is short on political theatrics and long on complicated economics, scary graphs and very big numbers. It reveals serious problems and offers no easy solutions. Anybody who wanted to deal with it seriously would have to talk about raising taxes and cutting benefits, nasty nostrums that might doom any candidate who prescribed them."There's no sexiness to it," laments Leita Hart-Fanta, an accountant who has just heard Walker's pitch. She suggests recruiting a trusted celebrity--maybe Oprah Winfrey--to sell fiscal responsibility to the American people.Walker doesn't want to make balancing the federal government's books sexy--he just wants to make it politically palatable. He has committed to touring the nation through the 2008 elections, talking to anybody who will listen. He wants them to know about the fiscal black hole Washington has dug itself, the "demographic tsunami" that will come when the Baby Boomer generation begins retiring and the recklessness of borrowing money from foreign lenders to pay for the operation of the U.S. government.He's dubbed his campaign the fiscal wake-up tour. The Illinois stop has not yet been scheduled.To show that the looming fiscal crisis is not a partisan issue, he brings along economists and budget analysts from across the political spectrum. In Austin, he's accompanied by Diane Lim Rogers, a liberal economist from the Brookings Institution, and Alison Acosta Fraser, director of the Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.Their basic message is this: If the United States government conducts business as usual over the next few decades, a national debt that is already $8.5 trillion could reach $46 trillion or more, adjusted for inflation.A hole that big could paralyze the U.S. economy; according to some projections, just the interest payments on a debt that big would be as much as all the taxes the government collects today. And every year that nothing is done about it, Walker says, the problem grows by $2 trillion to $3 trillion.People who remember Ross Perot's rants in the 1992 presidential election may think of the federal debt as a problem of the past. But it never really went away after Perot made it an issue, it only took a breather. The federal government actually produced a surplus for a while during the 1990s, thanks to a booming economy and fiscal restraint imposed by laws that were passed early in the decade. And though the federal debt has grown in dollar terms since 2001, it hasn't grown dramatically relative to the size of the economy.But that's about to change, thanks to the country's three big entitlement programs--Social Security, Medicaid and especially Medicare. Medicaid and Medicare have grown progressively more expensive as the cost of health care has dramatically outpaced inflation over the past 30 years, a trend that is expected to continue for at least another decade or two.And with the first Baby Boomers becoming eligible for Social Security in 2008 and for Medicare in 2011, the expenses of those two programs are about to increase dramatically due to demographic pressures. People are also living longer, which makes any program that provides benefits to retirees more expensive.Medicare already costs four times as much as it did in 1970, measured as a percentage of the nation's gross domestic product. It currently accounts for 13 percent of federal spending; by 2030, the Congressional Budget Office projects it will consume nearly a quarter of the budget.Social Security is a much less serious problem. The program currently pays for itself with a 12.4 percent payroll tax, and even produces a surplus that the government raids every year to pay other bills. But Social Security will begin to run deficits during the next century, and ultimately would need an infusion of $8 trillion if the government planned to keep its promises to every beneficiary.Why is America so fiscally unprepared for the next century? Like many of its citizens, the United States has spent the last few years racking up debt instead of saving for the future. Foreign lenders--primarily the central banks of China, Japan and other big U.S. trading partners--have been eager to lend the government money at low interest rates, making the current $8.5 trillion deficit about as painful as a big balance on a zero-percent credit card.Macroeconomic meltdown is probably preventable, says Anjan Thakor, a professor of finance at Washington University in St. Louis. But to keep it at bay, he said, the government is essentially going to have to renegotiate some of the promises it has made to its citizens, probably by some combination of tax increases and benefit cuts.But there's no way to avoid what Rogers considers the worst result of racking up a big deficit--the outrage of making our children and grandchildren repay the debts of their elders.
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Monday, October 23, 2006
Thursday, October 19, 2006
JACK MURTHA SPEAKS OUT
Do you believe that a veteran who dares to speak out against the Bush administration forfeits his or her right to be honored for service to America?
Of course not. But people who do are spending millions of dollars right now spreading lies and smears against veterans.
Help The Patriot Project expose and stop anti-veteran hate groups.
I've seen first hand the good work that The Patriot Project has done. When the so-called "Vets for the Truth" started attacking me, my record, and my right to speak the truth about the war in Iraq, The Patriot Project fought back. They exposed how "Vets for the Truth" had been set up and who was behind the funding of it. (Here's a hint: the group is really run by a man who describes himself as "good friends" with Karl Rove.)
When these scumbags organized a rally here in Pennsylvania, The Patriot Project went to work again.
They take on the people who think that, in a tough political spot, outright lying about a veteran's record is fair game.
Let's give The Patriot Project the help they need to give these characters a swift kick.
Help The Patriot Project expose and stop anti-veteran hate groups.
The Patriot Project is a smart, determined initiative to expose and stop shadowy groups that pop up and callously disparage the records of veterans with outright lies.
They're up against people with big budgets and no principles. And their work has never been more important than it is right now. I urge you to take a stand against anti-veteran hate groups right now.
Let's go get 'em.
Jack Murtha
Paid for by Friends of John Kerry.
Of course not. But people who do are spending millions of dollars right now spreading lies and smears against veterans.
Help The Patriot Project expose and stop anti-veteran hate groups.
I've seen first hand the good work that The Patriot Project has done. When the so-called "Vets for the Truth" started attacking me, my record, and my right to speak the truth about the war in Iraq, The Patriot Project fought back. They exposed how "Vets for the Truth" had been set up and who was behind the funding of it. (Here's a hint: the group is really run by a man who describes himself as "good friends" with Karl Rove.)
When these scumbags organized a rally here in Pennsylvania, The Patriot Project went to work again.
They take on the people who think that, in a tough political spot, outright lying about a veteran's record is fair game.
Let's give The Patriot Project the help they need to give these characters a swift kick.
Help The Patriot Project expose and stop anti-veteran hate groups.
The Patriot Project is a smart, determined initiative to expose and stop shadowy groups that pop up and callously disparage the records of veterans with outright lies.
They're up against people with big budgets and no principles. And their work has never been more important than it is right now. I urge you to take a stand against anti-veteran hate groups right now.
Let's go get 'em.
Jack Murtha
Paid for by Friends of John Kerry.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
PUT YOUR EYE ON THE PRIZE
I got an email from a friend today. She was upset about making English the national language and illegal aliens collecting social security. Addressing that issue . . . America has been the melting pot of the planet forever. As people immigrated here they spoke their separate languages since our first immigrants. By the above logic we should be speaking a Native American language as our national language.
On the social security issue -- we have around 12,000,000 illigal aliens in this country. Did they come here over the last week, month, year? No. We have allowed this to happen over decades. They clean our homes, groom our lawns, baby sit our children, etc. We've allowed them to be embedded into our society . . . we really can't do without them. They have been paying into social security for years with no opportunity to collect.
My point is - why is this an issue now? Answer - to take our attention off the real issues that threaten our very existence, such as . . . .
Global warming . . . which this administration won't even acknowledge.
The debacle in Iraq . . . does it bother you that 650,000 civilians have died there since we invaded. Who's the threat to their existence, us or Sadaam? We've got close to 3,000 dead troops, not to mention more than 20,000 wounded . . . by wounded I mean paraplegics whose benefits have been cut by this administration.
Anybody remember a storm called Katrina and this administration's response? What if it was a terrorist attack that didn't have a week's worth of warnings?
How about being warned that Osama bin laden wanted to attack the U.S. The warning came more than a month prior to 9/11. They moved a G8 meeting a year earlier for fear of a plane into building attack, but they claim they couldn't imagine that sort of attack.
I can go on and on about this administration's incompetence, but one thing they are completely competent in is the shell game. If they don't want you to be concerned about the real issues they scare the shit out of you with something meaningless.
WAKE UP AND INFORM YOURSELF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
On the social security issue -- we have around 12,000,000 illigal aliens in this country. Did they come here over the last week, month, year? No. We have allowed this to happen over decades. They clean our homes, groom our lawns, baby sit our children, etc. We've allowed them to be embedded into our society . . . we really can't do without them. They have been paying into social security for years with no opportunity to collect.
My point is - why is this an issue now? Answer - to take our attention off the real issues that threaten our very existence, such as . . . .
Global warming . . . which this administration won't even acknowledge.
The debacle in Iraq . . . does it bother you that 650,000 civilians have died there since we invaded. Who's the threat to their existence, us or Sadaam? We've got close to 3,000 dead troops, not to mention more than 20,000 wounded . . . by wounded I mean paraplegics whose benefits have been cut by this administration.
Anybody remember a storm called Katrina and this administration's response? What if it was a terrorist attack that didn't have a week's worth of warnings?
How about being warned that Osama bin laden wanted to attack the U.S. The warning came more than a month prior to 9/11. They moved a G8 meeting a year earlier for fear of a plane into building attack, but they claim they couldn't imagine that sort of attack.
I can go on and on about this administration's incompetence, but one thing they are completely competent in is the shell game. If they don't want you to be concerned about the real issues they scare the shit out of you with something meaningless.
WAKE UP AND INFORM YOURSELF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Monday, October 09, 2006
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Friday, October 06, 2006
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Monday, October 02, 2006
Sunday, October 01, 2006
MONDAY MORNING FUNNY
When George Bush first got elected President and was spending his first night in the White House.
The ghost of George Washington appears, and George says "How can I best serve my country?
Washington says: "Never tell a lie"
Ouch says George, "I don't know about that"
The next night, Thomas Jefferson appears... George says "How can I best serve my country?"
Jefferson says "Listen to the People"
"Ohhh! I really don't want to do that"
On the third night, the ghost of Abraham Lincoln appears....
George says, "How can I best serve my country?"
Lincoln says, "Go to the Theater."
The ghost of George Washington appears, and George says "How can I best serve my country?
Washington says: "Never tell a lie"
Ouch says George, "I don't know about that"
The next night, Thomas Jefferson appears... George says "How can I best serve my country?"
Jefferson says "Listen to the People"
"Ohhh! I really don't want to do that"
On the third night, the ghost of Abraham Lincoln appears....
George says, "How can I best serve my country?"
Lincoln says, "Go to the Theater."
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