Taxpayers have even more reason than academics to fear the impact, in part because the public may not learn the details before this plan becomes law. Democrats aim to bring their education revolution to the floor without a committee vote or even a hearing in the Senate. |
Democrats might seek to enact the bill passed by the House last summer, an even more ambitious plan sketched out in the President’s 2011 budget, or some mystery meat prepared by chef Tom Harkin, who chairs the Senate education committee. So far he won’t tell anyone what’s on the menu, and he may not have to. The limited 20 hours of reconciliation debate will no doubt be consumed by ObamaCare, but another new entitlement could be hustled into law under cover of bloviating lawmakers. |
| Both the House-passed bill and the President’s budget increase Pell Grants and also create automatic future increases, so individual grants will grow faster than inflation every year. Read more at online.wsj.com |
| Arizona Democrat makes the case for her proposal in the most direct manner possible: “The leadership of both parties have ignored the voices of the people for decades. |
| It’s been 77 years since members of Congress took a pay cut. |
| Today, a first-term Arizona Democrat, Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, has garnered a record number of co-sponsors for her proposed Taking Responsibility for Congressional Pay Act. |
| Kirkpatrick’s measure has attracted 19 co-sponsors, the most ever for a pay cut bill, she says. Kirkpatrick is not waiting on her colleagues to implement the pay cut, either, as she is returning $8,700 in equal monthly installments to the Treasury. |
| When Congress was working to end the Great Depression, they cut their salaries — why haven’t we taken that same basic step? |
| The time for politics as usual is over, and the time for action is now. Washington needs to finally step up. |
Commentary: Recent data paint a picture of an economy slowing — sharply |
 The fledgling economic recovery appears to be running out of gas… The recent run of economic data is most compelling. Just about all of them paint a picture of an economy slowing — and sharply, at that… |
– both consumer confidence and sentiment have fallen unexpectedly;
– after-tax personal incomes adjusted for inflation have flattened;
– sales of both new and existing homes took a surprising stumble;
– orders for most durable goods are down;
– manufacturing has slowed;
– jobless claims are up;
– fourth-quarter GDP growth came largely from a slower pace of inventory liquidation, not from an increase in consumer spending; |
– and as a matter of fact, consumer spending weakened last quarter.
Understand that the changes in the data above were not insignificant:
– consumer confidence fell to a 27-year low; Read more at directorblue.blogspot.com |
 The Head Table at the Health Care Summit Today, Which Ended With Little Hope of a Bipartisan Deal on Centrist Health Care Reform |
| “The folks in the White House just must be kicking themselves right now. They thought that coming out of Baltimore when the President went in and was mesmerizing and commanding in front of the House Republicans that he could do that again here today. That would revive health care and would change the public opinion about their health care bill and they can go on to victory. Just the opposite has happened.”Read more at centristnetblog.com |
| Bill O’Reilly and Progressive talking head Alan Colmes discuss the inevitable tax increases which will be caused by Obamacare |
| “Some of the things you said are state taxes, are local taxes. Some of the things you cited have nothing to do with the President’s doing and that’s because there is not enough money coming from the federal government, so the states have to do certain things.” |
| Colmes then repeated the misleading talking point that only the taxes on those making more than $250k. |
| The reality is that raising taxes on business owners leads to higher prices on goods and services, less money to pay employees, which leads to unemployment and under-employment. |
| In his keynote speech at CPAC, Glenn Beck invested an intriguing amount of effort in identifying “progressives” as the danger facing America. |
| The progressive idea of a big, bloated government has infected both parties. |
| It’s interesting to see the progressive label applied to the Left in a negative way. |
| Beck might be waiting to pounce with the checkered history of the early 20th-century Progressive movement, including their infatuation with eugenics, if the Left responds to his CPAC speech by claiming they’re proud to wear the “progressive” mantle. I hope I don’t spoil his fun by discussing it now, but it’s a topic that has interested me for a long time. Safely navigating the end of the New Deal calls for an understanding of how it began… and why it was always doomed to end this way. |
| The great intellectual obsession of the early 20th century was the belief that scientific methods could be used to design a superior society. Read more at www.doczero.org |
| Democrats have two excuses for what has gone so terribly wrong in the last year. The first is the “America is ungovernable” meme. Well, it has been impossible to govern from the Left, certainly. But we have yet to see evidence that a Centrist agenda, fiscal restraint, and pro-growth policies don’t work or can’t pass. |
| Let’s see how Govs. Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell do. Then we can revisit whether we have an “ungovernable” problem or a competency and/or extremism problem. |
The second excuse is that this is all a communications problem — from the most eloquent politician (we were told) of our time who had a sycophantic media at his feet for the better part of a year. Really, no one is buying this one. Susan Estrich is blunt: |
| It’s not a communications problem. What’s gone wrong is that people see the country swimming in debt, see the jobs recovery lagging, see friends and neighbors who are not even hanging on, and they just don’t know how this administration is planning to pay for aRead more at www.commentarymagazine.com |
| Tapscott writes, “Their confidence was understandable, given President Obama’s plummeting public approval ratings and his apparent determination to keep doing the things that are driving those numbers to record lows for a first-term chief executive.” |
| He strongly warns that Conservatives should not be deluded into thinking Fearless Reader and the Demonrats won’t do whatever they can, fair or foul, to win the coming campaign. |
“Obama has of late been playing political rope-a dope with congressional Republicans naive enough to believe his claims of sincerely wanting to discuss
their proposals at the health care summit. Read more at nosheepleshere.blogspot.com |
| The New York Times ran a front-page story this week called “Party Gridlock in Washington Feeds New Fear of a Debt Crisis.” |
In fact, gridlock in Washington is good, since it will stop the assault of big government until the end of the year when Congress could be overturned by independents, tea partiers, Republicans, and probably some Democrats as well. Just take a look at the high spirits at the CPAC convention, where tea partiers are reinvigorating conservatives and Republicans.
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So let’s take this momentum forward by using it to drain any remaining power from the extravagant spending-and-borrowing assault in Democratic Washington. And let’s especially use this tea-party power to stop Democratic plans for another round of broad-based tax increases.
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| Take, for example, Obama’s new deficit commission. It’s a bad idea. This commission is a fig leaf to cover up President Obama’s out-of-control budget. It’s a Trojan horse for tax hikes, especially a VAT that would engulfRead more at townhall.com |
| Sounding anything but presidential, this latest propaganda assault on the public forum leaves me talking outloud to the TV yet again. Why this bozo dirties our airwaves with his smelly BS is beyond me. He disgracefully pokes fun at the millions of discouraged, and financially hurting Americans as though we don’t count. This arrogant self righteous dictator, has the balls to claim some sort of victory on the economical front? All the while looking back as though needing the approval of Joey “B” standing behind him. The whole group looked like a playground gang, all reassuring each other that they own the playground. |
| Heres what I get from the 15 minute BS storm today; Obama is willing to spend taxpayer cash on anything he sees as a potential government run business. He will continue to keep unemployment climbing and dismantle independent free enterprise. Soon inflation will be out of control so that even those making ends meet now will be in trouble.Read more at bovinescatologist.com |
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That Other Government Takeover (that no one’s talking about)
