Yes, I'm well aware there are some very sick puppies who frequent iOwnTheWorld.Trust me: Atomic Roach is the sane one.
Yes, I'm well aware there are some very sick puppies who frequent iOwnTheWorld.
Consider: it's not yet certain that the United States has even weathered the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; the economy is still wobbling and real unemployment is around 20%. Yet Frank and Dodd have constructed another monument to themselves and to authoritarian government.
• Corporate Control: the bill gives unions, environmental groups and other activist fronts special abilities to put their representatives on the boards of every corporation in America. The "proxy access" provision is opposed by nearly every business consortium because it is wholly unrelated to financial services; it is simply a change in corporate governance that benefits radical Democrat Statists.
'Tea Party Racists': Think Progress Caught Red-Handed: ConfYankSenate Republicans are still fuming over the recess appointment of Donald Berwick to head the federal agency in charge of Medicare and Medicaid.In retaliation, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) blocked a Democratic request Wednesday evening to advance two of President Obama’s nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.Top 10 Rejected DemCare Slogans
10. Why choose an expensive treatment when pain-pills will do?
9. Assisted Suicide: Do it for the Children
8. We Put the Rash in Rationing
7. Ask Us About Our Discount Placebo Program!
6. Only Selfish People Beg for CAT Scans.
5. Take a Number! The Bureau of Health Waiting Rooms reports the average wait time is now down to 123 minutes (in some locations)
4. Quack isn't just the sound a duck makes: we're importing medical experts from Mexico as part of our new Health Amnesty Program!
3. Shut up, take a seat and wait for your number to be called, Mr. GB21708-4.
2. Rahm Emanuel perusing your medical records: what could go wrong?
1. Sound mind, sound body -- take your pick.
Also Wednesday evening, Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee demanded a public hearing on Berwick.
Obama used his constitutional prerogative to circumvent Senate confirmation of Berwick by appointing him the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service during the July 4th recess.
Republicans struck back by blocking an effort to schedule a vote on two of Obama’s judicial picks: North Carolina Court of Appeals Judge Jim Wynn and North Carolina Superior Court Judge Albert Diaz. Obama tapped both for the Fourth Circuit.
Berwick's appointment was historic for a couple of reasons. For the first time in memory, a President bypassed the Senate confirmation process without so much as a hearing. And Berwick is the only Medicare head to praise England's National Health Service, which provides measurably inferior care compared to the U.S. and, as a bonus, is bankrupting the Exchequer.• Illinois let $5 billion of bills go unpaid.
• Minnesota is delaying corporate and sales-tax refunds, postponing school and medical aid and setting up a $600 million bank line of credit.
• New Jersey is planning to refinance about $250 million of general-obligation bonds to push $202.5 million of debt-service costs into future fiscal years.
• Illinois, is selling $900 million of bonds for capital projects this week.
• 22 states put staff on temporary leave.
• Arizona sold its House of Representatives and Senate buildings.
• California solicited bids for 11 of its office complexes.
• Delaware saved $29,000 by eliminating flowers at the state psychiatric hospital and health department.
• California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, facing a $19 billion budget deficit for the year that began this month, is trying to force 200,000 state workers onto minimum wages temporarily.
All of those half-assed measures assume the economy is going to get better later this year. Instead I suggest states should expect a Second-Half Housing and Durable Goods Crash.
California alone is $19 billion in the hole and that is after California enacted a temporary 1 percentage point increase in the sales tax rate (expected to generate about $4.5 billion in fiscal 2010) and after it accelerated income tax collection.
It is also after patching a $24 billion hole earlier in the year.
Literally no state is remotely prepared for the second-half tsunami coming down the pike.
We’ve been waiting for a good theme. It has revealed itself. In the spirit of the Mega Mosque at Ground Zero we are looking for Inappropriate Shrines, Symbols, Awards, Tributes etc.
An example would be a Benihana at the Arizona.Or, as Mr. Pinko said, a loving tribute to Bucky Dent at Fenway Park.
In Annapolis, less than half a mile from the State House and Governor's Mansion, a colony of homeless people live under the College Creek Bridge on Rowe Boulevard. On Friday, no one was there when a reporter and photographer visited, but clothing, chairs and drying laundry showed the site to be home to at least two groups of people.
Figures provided by the county Department of Social Services show that homelessness is indeed on the rise. In 2009, the department recorded more than 1,000 homeless adults, compared with 550 two years earlier. The number of homeless children jumped from 429 in 2007 to 960 last year, figures show.
"We are seeing an increase, mostly in the area of homeless adults, because people are losing their jobs and their homes," said Marci Kennai, county director of social services....Zerhusen founded HOPE in 2004 .. Last year, the charity helped 83 families. This year, volunteers have assisted nearly 100 - and the year's only half over... "A lot of what's happening is because of the economy," Zerhusen said.
Other charities are experiencing the same crushing need... The Rev. Ed Jansen, director of the Emmaus Center in Glen Burnie, said he is "absolutely swamped" with people in need. The center, which he opened with his wife in 2008, serves breakfast and lunch to homeless people and also provides counseling services. Jansen estimates that he serves about 1,200 meals a month.
"We're adequately serving our people, but we're just overwhelmed by the need," Jansen said.
The Tea Party Isn't Racist: Daily Beast
Last year in Greenville, South Carolina, a man approached a mother and daughter selling Girl Scout cookies at the Bi-Lo on West Wade Hampton Boulevard.
He asked to buy a box of lemon cookies. When the mother turned around, he grabbed their cash box -- which contained $300 -- and fled.
The suspect was described as "a white male with dirty blonde hair between the ages of 25-35, approximately 5’8 and 170 pounds, wearing blue jeans, a denim coat and a baseball hat."
The little girl -- a first year Girl Scout -- was heartbroken. The suspect was never identified.
In the spring of 2009, Idaho high school students visited Washington and carried with them a petition. The students -- fearful of massive deficit spending -- called for a balanced budget.
Democrat budgets for the foreseeable future quadruple the annual deficit: the record-setting figure for 2010 is roughly $1.9 trillion. Obama's claim about cutting the deficit in half in a few years is a fairy tail -- like "slashing prices" by 50 percent the day after you’ve doubled them.
And the administration blatantly lied, stating that tax increases would not affect 95 percent of taxpayers. New taxes on energy -- under the fraudulent "cap-and-trade" regime -- will force every business in America to raise its prices. Taxpayers will be wounded... directly and indirectly.
Democrats also used every budgeting gimmick, every payoff and bribe, every sleazy tactic possible to pass socialized medicine, a failure everywhere it's been tried -- into the Statists' plans. As for the $45 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities represented by Medicare and Medicaid? On that subject, Obama is utterly silent.
Obama and the rest of the Democrats want to tell you how much energy you can use (smart grids that can automatically shut off your air conditioner), whether you can give money to charities and which kinds of toilets you can buy.
Even ignoring his oppressive energy taxes, every dollar of Obama's new debt means that future taxes must be $1 higher in present-value terms. This translates to a discounted present-value legacy of $6.5 trillion of new, future taxes.
The tax burden each family of four can expect? $163,000. Let me repeat that: $163,000 for each and every tax-paying household in America.
Your children... my children... our grandchildren... are all slaves to the Obama budget. Because Barack Obama and his comrades in Congress are ideologues. They could care less about the economy.
They're beholden to ACORN, the SEIU, the NEA, the AFT, the ACLU and trial lawyers of every vintage and variety.
As subscribers to a failed ideology, Obama, Pelosi, Reid and the rest of the radical Statists are consigning our descendants to slavery. Girl Scouts. Boy Scouts. Toddlers. Infants. The unborn.
If you don't vote in November to throw out every Democrat possible, I would simply apologize in advance to your kids for the inevitable destruction of their unchecked policies.
So when Bowles got a chance to give his opinion on Sunday, he stunned observers with a frank assessment that -- truth be told -- was a harsh indictment of every Democrat President from FDR to BHO.As a president, it's one thing to know you have a big fiscal problem. It's quite another when a panel you appointed tells you the policies you have in mind will only make things worse.
That's what happened Sunday, when leaders of President Obama's deficit commission offered up the darkest of outlooks for our financial future — calling current trends in U.S. budgets a "cancer" that will "destroy the country from within" unless halted soon.
Studies show that government spending should remain below 20% for optimal efficiency and highest growth rates. Problem is, the current Obama budget is already around 25% of GDP (versus a long-term average of 18%). By 2030, that figure will rise to an oppressive 32% of GDP. Americans would have to pay around 80% higher taxes -- nearly double what they pay now -- to fund the massive bureaucracies.
Bowles said, "This debt is like a cancer... It is truly going to destroy the country from within."