What’s interesting out there today?
How about the Dueling Budgets? I guess it’s only fair to start with the Senate proposal, since it’s the first in 5 years. Slackers. And not surprisingly, it calls for a trillion dollar tax increase. Oh wait, I’m sorry, the new term is “increased revenues”. My bad. 🙄
From Politico
“Sen. Patty Murray’s new budget plan calls for raising tax revenues by nearly $1 trillion while cutting spending by roughly the same amount over the next decade, according to people familiar with the proposal.
The Budget Committee chairwoman briefed fellow Democratic senators over the new proposal in a closed-door lunch Tuesday that President Barack Obama also attended. Committee deliberations will begin Wednesday, and the panel expects to vote on the plan Thursday before floor debate next week.”
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The House plan, from Ryan, is nothing to get real excited about either. But at least it won’t increase taxes. Allegedly.
From TheWallStJournal
“America’s national debt is over $16 trillion. Yet Washington can’t figure out how to cut $85 billion—or just 2% of the federal budget—without resorting to arbitrary, across-the-board cuts. Clearly, the budget process is broken. In four of the past five years, the president has missed his budget deadline. Senate Democrats haven’t passed a budget in over 1,400 days. By refusing to tackle the drivers of the nation’s debt—or simply to write a budget—Washington lurches from crisis to crisis.
House Republicans have a plan to change course. On Tuesday, we’re introducing a budget that balances in 10 years—without raising taxes. How do we do it? We stop spending money the government doesn’t have. Historically, Americans have paid a little less than one-fifth of their income in taxes to the federal government each year. But the government has spent more.”
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Meanwhile the White House finds time for more important things. Who needs budgets anyway, when you can have “increased revenues”? I guess that’s how they plan on paying for increased entitlements.
“President Obama policy aides attacked a Republican bill that would block the Department of Health and Human Services from waiving the work requirements associated with the 1996 welfare reform bill, even as the White House continued to deny that it had authorized such waivers.
“With respect to the provision in H.R. 890 to limit State flexibility to strengthen the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program, the Administration notes that this flexibility was requested by Governors on both sides of the aisle to allow States to test new, more effective ways to place more people on a path to self-sufficiency,” the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a policy statement today. “The Administration is disappointed that the bill includes this unnecessary bar to innovative welfare-to-work strategies.”
Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., introduced the bill. “Nothing in current law prohibits a State from strengthening its work requirements and moving more individuals from welfare to work,” Camp said during a hearing last week. “Instead, a waiver would only be needed to weaken the work requirements, as the Administration wishes to do, pure and simple.”
And paying for yet another needless Czar and his staff.
From JudicialWatch
“Keeping with his race-based ideology, President Obama has named the nation’s first African American education czar to focus on improving the academic performance of black students and countering the discrimination that persists in public schools around the country.
The official title is Executive Director of White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans and the task is to reduce “racial isolation and resegregation of elementary and secondary schools.” Despite decades-old desegregation laws, “substantial obstacles” to equal educational opportunities still remain in America’s public school system, according to the president. Therefore the academic performance of black students has for decades lagged behind whites and other ethnic minorities.”
“So last summer the commander-in-chief issued an executive order to create a special White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans. The goal is to tackle a rampant crisis of perpetually low academic performance and high dropout rates among black students. African Americans lack equal access to highly effective teachers and principals, safe schools and challenging college-preparatory classes and they disproportionately experience school discipline and referrals to special education, according to the executive order.
President Obama also threw this often-cited statistic into his race-based educational excellence executive order: “African American males also experience disparate rates of incarceration.” Presumably, his new initiative will bring the numbers down. The effort includes the creation of a new President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans and a special “working group” consisting of senior officials from the departments of Justice, Education, Labor and White House Domestic Policy Council.”
I’m so glad we finally have a post-racial President. 🙄
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And Sharyl Attkisson asks a good question over at CBS.
“Six months later, where are the Benghazi survivors?”
“Today marks six months since the September 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. compounds in Benghazi, Libya in which four Americans were killed, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Some watchdog groups, members of the media and Republican members of Congress are asking: Where are the more than two dozen U.S. personnel who survived the attack but haven’t been seen nor heard from in public since? There were also an undisclosed number of witnesses at the U.S. compounds in Tripoli but they also have not spoken publicly.
In a recent press report, Secretary of State John Kerry said he visited one survivor at “Bethesda hospital,” and referred to him a “remarkably courageous person who is doing very, very well.” Kerry added, “I’ve called his wife and talked to her.” But the identities, condition and testimony of the survivors and witnesses have been closely held from the public.
Republicans demanded more information about Benghazi in recent weeks before they would agree to allow Obama Administration nominees to move forward in the Senate. A source familiar with material turned over to the Senate Intelligence Committee by the Obama Administration in response tells CBS News that long sought-after FBI transcripts of some survivors were included but had been “blacked out” or redacted. Three Senate Republicans including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., say they want the survivors to be made available for interviews about what happened the night of the attacks.”
I guess the answer is “What difference does it make?”
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Wandering Views 
Since most African American students go to schools in democrat controlled cities and counties they should take responsibility for it.
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KBells,
Now, now…. You know the rules. Pointin’ out the obvious gets you called a racist. But yeah, funny that huh?
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Is poor achievement of students the fault of the school or poor parenting? Chicken or egg?
How about both? Maybe the answer might be found in church. I have little chance of changing schools, but I have some chance of changing things at church.
Are the problems of the world going to be changed by politics or is it a sin problem?
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What difference does it make? I’ll tell you what difference it makes – there are always lessons to be learned in the aftermath of an incident such as Benghazi. Maybe something like not repeating past mistakes, if nothing else? The big thing is they don’t want the truth coming out.
Regarding African American education. A large number of the underperforming African Americans don’t even want to be in school. Where’s the magic pill that gives them the “wanna”? They need to sell education as a positive way to get somewhere.
Oh. Right. A bachelor’s degree and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee nowadays. There are no jobs for the educated in anything but service and retail, which requires minimal education.
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Schools today preach that “All children can and will learn.” This means all children must go to higher education.
What if you just don’t like “book larnin’ ?” What to do with those who haven’t learned to read, write or to do simple math? According to schools today, they will still have to go to college or university.
Still, do our churches address this problem? Do Christians allow God to change the lives of people in our churches?
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RB,
Education will never get fixed for anyone until we can honestly say,”you would be better served seeking a vocational program than pursuing academics”. As long as we push to equalize everything all we do is water everything down and prevent excellence in any students.
The biggest problem with my black students is the culture they are immersed in that does not value academic success. And a serious lack of parental involvement in many cases.
BTW, notice I did not use the term “African-American”. That’s a crock… they dont use it to describe themselves and would laugh at me if I used it to describe them.
Once at an academic team meet the question was posed,”Who was the first African American actress to win an Oscar for Best Actress and in what Film?” The correct answer as given was Halle Berry for Monster’s Ball. I vehemnetly argued that that answer was incorrect…it should be Charlize Theron for Monster. She was actually born in Africa…
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vehemnetly??? you know what I meant! 🙂
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taxes — the congressional research service recently concluded that there is no discernible relationship between tax rates and GDP, ie tax rates don’t affect economic activity. Since 1979, US federal taxes have been in steady decline with only a slight increase to top 20% wage earners during the Clinton era. Coincidentally, the Clinton era featured a balanced budget and better economic conditions. Returning to 1979 rates which Clinton did would do little harm to the economy. If one looks further back, the high tax era of the 50s and 60s delivered a large middle class and a stable economy.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=456
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welfare waiver — I recall this discussion a while back. Weren’t some Republican governors actually requesting the waiver to fit local circumstance into the program? Isn’t that a conservative talking point — more power to lower levels of government?
Benghazi — what is the idea behind interviewing survivors … are the Republicans wanting to serve partisan advantage? Will national interests be compromised by this push — its highly likely that some people stationed there were members of the intelligence committee. If the Republicans want information in order to prevent future attacks then its a perfectly valid inquiry but were these inquiries made previously during Bush era attacks? Are they being consistent?
African American education — how far back do we need to go? Some may argue that white flight left urban communities without civic leaders as blacks were only one generation removed from the great migration and illiteracy. And when the black middle class left during the 80s, the cities really began to die.
The rise in incarceration in the 90s onward affected urban blacks more than other groups (for whatever reason). This left whole areas bereft of males, normalized criminality, made males unemployable, and in the end broke the social fabric.
Do they vote Democrat because they are poor or are they poor because they vote Democrat? Or perhaps they vote Democrat because urban America usually votes Democrat even when it was mostly white.
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hwesseli,
There are a few cities in the USA that work noticeably better than most. When you look at them, there often seems to be a Republican mayor. Look at the states that are doing better than they used to. Republican governors?
I live in California. As more and more of the state is taken over by Democrats, the situation worsens.
I realize these are broad generalities, but please show me where government runs better because Democrats are in charge.
Besides that, Democrats lie, cheat and vote fraudulently. Democrats run poor government. Often they are too stupid to see the nose on their face; Governor Moonbeam’s bullet train that will cost more than flying and take longer too! Besides that there is already a right-of-way that goes most of the way between San Francisco /Sacramento and L.A., I-5.
I wonder how much money would be saved by using a paid for right-of-way? That would be instead of using productive, expensive, settled farm land. Where people live.
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As for why urban dwellers vote Democratic, who knows. I can’t explain why anybody would vote that way. It and they are just stupid to me.
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