Posts Tagged ‘spending’
Is President Obama a big spender?
The answer is a big yes and no. As Mark Twain said, “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” It is not exactly a case of “lying,” but rather a case of putting a spin on what the numbers mean. The two articles from Forbes Magazine presented below are excellent examples. In “ Who Is The Smallest Government Spender Since Eisenhower?” a May, 2012 article, Rick Ungar makes the case that it is Barack Obama. He includes a graph that shows the annualized growth in federal ... Full Story
Moyers, no speech for the poor
Bill Moyers Essay: The Cowardly Lions of ‘Free Speech’ July 6, 2012 Bill opens this week’s show by explaining how last week’s Supreme Court decision not to reconsider Citizens United exposes the hoax that Citizens United was ever about “free” speech. In reality, Bill says, it’s about carpet bombing elections “with all the tonnage your rich paymasters want to buy.” See It Here
Did World War II Vets fight for corporate takeover?
From the National Memo WATCH: Did World War II Vets Fight For The Citizens United Decision? By Henry Decker The American Future Fund — a shadowy right wing 501(c)(4) “social welfare” group which can raise any amount of money without disclosing its donors– has released an absurd online ad suggesting that World War II veterans fought and died to protect unlimited corporate political spending. ... Read More and watch the video
“Taxing the rich is not a job killer”
In Business Insider Venture Capitalist Shreds The Idea That Taxing The Rich Is A Job Killer by Lisa Du In an Bloomberg op-ed yesterday, venture capitalist Nick Hanauer laid out a very different point of view on the age-old, Republican-favored argument of "if taxes are raised on the rich, job creation will stop." This particular point has been at the forefront in opposing nearly every policy debate about raising taxes on the rich. Hanauer's contrarian view looks at the state of job ... Full Story
Why defense spending should be cut
Why defense spending should be cut By Fareed Zakaria Published: August 3 The scary aspect of the debt deal meant to force all of Washington to its senses is the threatened cut to defense spending. If the congressional “super-committee” cannot agree on cutbacks of $1.5 trillion, the guillotine will fall and half of those cuts will have to come from expenditures on national security. As with so much Washington accounting, there is lots of ambiguity in baselines ... Full Story
Epitaph for the 3-R’s
Last week President Obama signed an executive order allowing states to "opt out" of the reading and math requirements of No Child Left Behind. After all, who needs to know math when everyone has their own calculator. And kids don't need to read when they've got video games. Oh, and the last "R", writing, was already dead - everyone "texts" these days. That's why so many entering college freshmen need to take a remedial writing course. With the 3-R's dead, the ... Full Story
A lull in the debt crisis
Hear that rattling sound? It’s the can being kicked down the road. Congress and the Administration passed the “Budget Control Act of 2011” to avert the immediate debt crisis. The problem is, 70% of the spending reductions in the bill are not scheduled to occur until 2017 to 2021. Will Congressional Representatives, at that time, honor those reductions, or will they override them? Regardless, the reduction in spending will be swallowed-up many times over by Government budgeting ... Full Story
