April 11th, 2011

Mitt Romney Is Running For President….Who Knew?

Mitt Romney surprised everyone today by announcing the creation of a Presidential exploratory committee.  The political universe is shocked by this development.  They thought he just liked Iowa and New Hampshire as winter vacation spots.

Seriously, Romney and Tim Pawlenty are probably the only two current Republican candidates for President that can beat Barack Obama.  He is strong centrist that has a shot against Obama in states in all regions of the United States and is a good enough fundraiser to challenge Omaba’s predicted war chest.

He does need to stop ripping off AquaFresh though.  Take a gander at his new campaign branding compared to that of that fine toothpaste.

 

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April 11th, 2011

Super Mario’s Destiny

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April 10th, 2011

Canadian Soldiers Making Coffee In The Desert Of Afghanistan

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April 9th, 2011

Tax Question About Paul Ryan’s Path To Prosperity

In his Path To Prosperity, Representative Paul Ryan(R-WI) projects revenues to jump from $2.2 trillion in FY2011 to $3.1 trillion in FY2014.   That is a 40.9% increase in revenues in just three years.  Even if you make the totals inflation* neutral, that is still a 30% revenue increase.  That is quite a jump.

I realize that there will be a revenue jump due to an improved economy, but even keeping at current tax levels, a 30% jump in revenue would be nearly impossible.

If you look at the two seminal tax cuts of the last 30 years(Reagan 1981 and Bush 2001), the three year out revenue intake was nowhere near 30%.  In 1984, tax revenues were only 9.5% above FY1981 levels.  The numbers look even worse for the Bush tax cuts.  FY2004 tax revenues were 5.9% BELOW FY2001 levels.

So here is my question.  When history has shown us that large tax cuts produce a modest rise or even decreases in total Federal tax revenues, why does Representative Ryan forecast and depend on more large tax cuts to increase revenues by an amount four times more than has ever been achieved by similar multi trillion dollar supply-side tax cuts?

 

 

*—-Using the average inflation since 2000(2.5%)

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April 8th, 2011

Continuing Resolution Budget Passes

The adults have shown up and passed a Continuing Resolution to keep the Federal Government open for business until Thursday, and more importantly, reached an agreement to fund the government until the end of the fiscal year.

The fight over the funding of the Federal Government for the remainder of FY2011 was small potatoes compared to what is coming up in terms of the debt ceiling and the FY2012 Federal Budget.  There was absolutely no need to shut down the government in this situation for any reason or for either side to expend precious political capital.  Cooler heads have prevailed and we will go on to the next battle.

Bravo to Speaker Boehner, Senator Harry Reid, and the Obama White House.   Now on to the real fights.

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April 8th, 2011

NEA To The Rescue?

I doubt the NEA will be defending this dumbass teacher any time soon.

The principal of Sewells Point Elementary School has apologized to parents for a teacher’s classroom exercise last week that cast her black and mixed-race fourth-graders as available for sale.

The apology came after the teacher separated the students from their white classmates and auctioned them, division spokeswoman Elizabeth Thiel Mather said. The exercise was part of an April 1 class on the Civil War.

In an April 6 letter sent to parents of students in the class, Principal Mary B. Wrushen wrote: “I recently became aware of a history lesson that was presented to the students in Ms. Jessica Boyle’s fourth grade class. Although her actions were well intended to meet the instructional objectives, the activity presented was inappropriate for the students.

What was this woman thinking?  My God.

[note: It's amazing what information you can find by googling someone.  Actually, it is quite scary.  I googled her to see if I could come up with any other information on the incident, but instead I found old social network sites, her alma mater, etc.  Really scary what someone can find.]

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April 8th, 2011

John Boehner Has Even Lost Michelle Bachmann & Mike Huckabee

From the New York Times:

Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, the founder of the Tea Party caucus in the House and a likely 2012 presidential candidate, tweeted Friday afternoon: “I am ready for a big fight that will change the arc of history. The current fight in Washington is not that fight.”

In an article on Redstate, Ms. Bachmann concludes that “the current battle has devolved to an agenda that is almost too limited to warrant the kind of fighting that we’re now seeing in Washington.”

Likewise, Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and a possible presidential candidate, said Friday afternoon in an interview that a shutdown would “hurt the Republicans, not the Democrats.”

Mr. Huckabee, who was a favorite of religious conservatives during his 2008 presidential campaign, said: “Nobody’s more pro-life than me. Nobody. But as much as I want to see Planned Parenthood defunded, as much as I want to see N.P.R lose their funding, the reality is the president and the Senate are never going to go along with that. So win the deal you can win and live to fight another day.”

Speaker Boehner has lost control of his caucus and the larger GOP base.  Whether or not he was forced into this fight over Planned Parenthood doesn’t matter.  What matters is that he is an ineffectual Speaker who has issues controlling message because he isn’t respected by his caucus, the Tea Party, or the rest of the GOP base.

If he is Speaker by the end of May, I would be shocked.

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April 8th, 2011

Beware Of Heritage Foundation Predictions

From the Heritage Foundation in 2001:

One element of the debate over President Bush’s tax plan concerns how it will affect household and government budgets as well as the U.S. economy.2 To assess the plan’s economic and budgetary effects and to help frame this debate, analysts in The Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis (CDA) conducted a dynamic simulation of the proposals in the President’s tax relief plan. The final results show that the Bush plan would significantly increase economic growth and family income while substantially reducing federal debt.3 For example:

  • Under President Bush’s plan, an average family of four’s inflation-adjusted disposable income would increase by $4,544 in fiscal year (FY) 2011, and the national debt would effectively be paid off by FY 2010.
  • The net tax revenue reduction, after accounting for the larger tax base that would result from higher employment and faster economic growth under the Bush plan, is $1.1 trillion from FY 2002 to FY 2011, 33.4 percent less than conventional static estimates.

The National Debt is currently over $14 trillion and unemployment is 4.3% higher than when the article was written in April 2001.

 

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April 8th, 2011

Planned Parenthood Becoming The Story Of The Possible Government Shutdown

So we are at Planned Parenthood.  Maybe.

John Boehner and Harry Reid are disagreeing about where their difference are at the moment.  According to the Speaker, the issue of the riders attached to H.R. 1 have been agreed upon and all that is left is a final total of cuts.  Mr. Reid is insisting an alternate version of finalized budget numbers and disagreements on the policy riders of H.R. 1.

Who is telling the truth?  It doesn’t matter.  All that matter is who is controlling the debate and today that is obviously the Congressional Democrats.

Both Reid and Boehner are probably stretching the truth a bit.  They’ve probably not agreed on anything, but, as I said, the truth doesn’t matter politically.  It matters who is controlling the debate and the Democrats are quickly making this budget fight a referendum on Planned Parenthood and the Republican House Leadership are being set up for a losing battle.

According to a Quinnipiac poll from just one month ago, the American public opposes defunding Planned Parenthood by a 53%-43% margin.  The numbers are even grimmer when you look at moderates who oppose defunding Planned Parenthood by a margin of 23%.

There is still hope for Republicans, but they quickly need to realize that today is only the first battle in a larger war consisting of 3 increasingly important battles: the FY2011 Budget, Increase of the Debt Limit, and the FY2012 Budget.

Senator Pat Toomey(R-PA) has been “the smartest man in the room” for the Republicans.  He was honest with his constituency. For Toomey, this fight is peanuts and the Republicans should be focusing the debate on the debt limit and the FY2012 budget.  Battles that they can win without the Pyhrric victory that is even seeming more unlikely with each passing news cycle.

If the Democrats complete their flanking motion on defunding of Planned Parenthood, not only will they probably win this small potatoes budget fight, they will have the upper hand on the much more important fights on the debt limit and FY2012 budget.

 

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April 8th, 2011

Flight From San Fransisco To Paris In Two Mintues

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