Secretariat
02-28-2009, 01:13 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/opinion/27krugman.html
Climate of Change
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Elections have consequences. President Obama’s new budget represents a huge break, not just with the policies of the past eight years, but with policy trends over the past 30 years. If he can get anything like the plan he announced on Thursday through Congress, he will set America on a fundamentally new course.
The budget will, among other things, come as a huge relief to Democrats who were starting to feel a bit of postpartisan depression. The stimulus bill that Congress passed may have been too weak and too focused on tax cuts. The administration’s refusal to get tough on the banks may be deeply disappointing. But fears that Mr. Obama would sacrifice progressive priorities in his budget plans, and satisfy himself with fiddling around the edges of the tax system, have now been banished.
For this budget allocates $634 billion over the next decade for health reform. That’s not enough to pay for universal coverage, but it’s an impressive start. And Mr. Obama plans to pay for health reform, not just with higher taxes on the affluent, but by putting a halt to the creeping privatization of Medicare, eliminating overpayments to insurance companies.
On another front, it’s also heartening to see that the budget projects $645 billion in revenues from the sale of emission allowances. After years of denial and delay by its predecessor, the Obama administration is signaling that it’s ready to take on climate change.
And these new priorities are laid out in a document whose clarity and plausibility seem almost incredible to those of us who grew accustomed to reading Bush-era budgets, which insulted our intelligence on every page. This is budgeting we can believe in."
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Also a good article on the joke called CPAC by Politico.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090228/pl_politico/19433
Bush a four-letter word at CPAC
by Andy Barr
.......
"Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman and current host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” warned the GOP against becoming the party of resistance and urged conservatives to tone down their rhetoric against Obama.
“We have to present alternatives, we can’t just say no,” he said. “There is an alternative to everything we hear from the White House every single day, but we can’t just say no.”
He added: “We’re not going to win votes and we’re not going to win elections by calling Barack Obama a communist.”
Let's hope Bonior keeps it up and you guys keep posting the stuff about Obama's citizenship and socialism. I smile everytime I see those posts, and I want to thank you for helping us get the moderate votes with it. Well done. Oh, and keep trotting out Bobby Jindal, Palin and the Rush man. It's working for us.
Climate of Change
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Elections have consequences. President Obama’s new budget represents a huge break, not just with the policies of the past eight years, but with policy trends over the past 30 years. If he can get anything like the plan he announced on Thursday through Congress, he will set America on a fundamentally new course.
The budget will, among other things, come as a huge relief to Democrats who were starting to feel a bit of postpartisan depression. The stimulus bill that Congress passed may have been too weak and too focused on tax cuts. The administration’s refusal to get tough on the banks may be deeply disappointing. But fears that Mr. Obama would sacrifice progressive priorities in his budget plans, and satisfy himself with fiddling around the edges of the tax system, have now been banished.
For this budget allocates $634 billion over the next decade for health reform. That’s not enough to pay for universal coverage, but it’s an impressive start. And Mr. Obama plans to pay for health reform, not just with higher taxes on the affluent, but by putting a halt to the creeping privatization of Medicare, eliminating overpayments to insurance companies.
On another front, it’s also heartening to see that the budget projects $645 billion in revenues from the sale of emission allowances. After years of denial and delay by its predecessor, the Obama administration is signaling that it’s ready to take on climate change.
And these new priorities are laid out in a document whose clarity and plausibility seem almost incredible to those of us who grew accustomed to reading Bush-era budgets, which insulted our intelligence on every page. This is budgeting we can believe in."
..........................................
Also a good article on the joke called CPAC by Politico.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090228/pl_politico/19433
Bush a four-letter word at CPAC
by Andy Barr
.......
"Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman and current host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” warned the GOP against becoming the party of resistance and urged conservatives to tone down their rhetoric against Obama.
“We have to present alternatives, we can’t just say no,” he said. “There is an alternative to everything we hear from the White House every single day, but we can’t just say no.”
He added: “We’re not going to win votes and we’re not going to win elections by calling Barack Obama a communist.”
Let's hope Bonior keeps it up and you guys keep posting the stuff about Obama's citizenship and socialism. I smile everytime I see those posts, and I want to thank you for helping us get the moderate votes with it. Well done. Oh, and keep trotting out Bobby Jindal, Palin and the Rush man. It's working for us.