Before we take an ax to the federal budget, let's try a scalpel. Many things done in one federal department or agency are also done in others, according to a new Government Accountability Office study. Even wonderful programs don't get better in the duplicate, triplicate or quadruplicate. By locating and excising them, taxpayers could save billions, the GAO suggests, with minimal loss of government services.
According to news reports, Team Obama and House Republicans are at least $50 billion apart in the budget negotiations for FY2011. I'm willing to bet that Team Obama and Senate Democrats won't agree to even $20 billion in spending cuts.
"America is not broke," filmmaker Michael Moore told a group protesting against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's attempts to curb public employee union collective bargaining in Madison over the weekend.
The labor union movement is in deep trouble. Only 6 percent of private-sector employees are union members.
In recent national polling about the situation in Wisconsin, Rasmussen Reports and Quinnipiac found a slight plurality in favor of Governor Scott Walker and his efforts, the Pew Center found a plurality opposed, and Gallup and the New York Times reported strong opposition.
Last month, the website Politico reported that the Department of Justice dropped its representation of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his former deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and other defendants in a lawsuit filed by convicted al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla and his mother. The Department of Justice continues to represent Defense Secretary Robert Gates, but no longer the Bushies.
Big economic-growth stats are trumping oil prices and the Mideast tinderbox. In optimistic trading on Thursday, stocks soared nearly 200 Dow points. Oil barely fell to just under $102 a barrel. Know what? The market may be shouting out that the recent oil spike is not going to derail economic recovery.
My guess is that there was not a single member of the United States Supreme Court who was not personally appalled that the Westboro Baptist Church would target the funeral of a soldier who died in battle so they could get publicity for their anti-gay views.
If you are a normal, trusting consumer of American journalism, you might well have gotten the impression by now that the current attempt to break public-sector unions -- with its epicenter in Wisconsin -- is overwhelmingly supported by the nation's voters.
This week, Charlie Sheen owns network news. No wonder Americans hate the media.
It is already obvious that control of the Senate will be up for grabs in 2012, with Republicans needing just 3 or 4 seats to take control (depending on whether the GOP wins the presidency and, along with it, the vice president’s tie-breaking vote).
A decade ago, when our national debt stood at a “mere” $5.6 trillion, the federal government was already dramatically overpaying its employees to perform all sorts of non-core functions.
Sometimes you get an idea of the way opinion is headed by the phrases you don't hear. Case in point: In all the discussion and debate these past weeks about a possible government shutdown if Congress and President Obama fail to agree on funding bills, I don't recall having heard the phrase "train wreck."
Too bad the showdown with public employee unions has come to this, however long in the making. One can be pro-union and still feel a growing resentment at these workers' ability to set their own dream retirement benefits as the private sector's were being amputated. Not that they are to blame. They got what they could -- it's the American way -- though they overplayed their hand by resisting honest efforts to reform government, schools above all.
In the same weeks that are seeing the Middle East (with all its oil and geopolitical significance) begin to transform itself into we know not what, important economists are predicting that, if current trends continue, not only China, but India also will within a generation have larger economies than ours. And, of course, with strong economies almost inevitably come equivalently strong military capacities.
Though I deem myself a sort-of liberal, I don't closely read the left-wing magazine The Nation. Its views don't budge for decades at a time, so one can get by just checking in now and then.
I am reluctant to join the chorus of scolds who chide Republicans for opposing Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal to put a tax-increase extension on a special election ballot in June.
It's a question that puzzles most liberals and bothers some conservatives. Why are so many modest-income white voters rejecting the Obama Democrats' policies of economic redistribution and embracing the small-government policies of the tea party movement?
In 2008, 56 percent of Wisconsin voters supported Barack Obama for president. In 2009, Wisconsin's Democratic governor and Democratic Legislature passed legislation that raised taxes and fees by about $1.2 billion over three years. State lawmakers approved the bill on the very day it was introduced, with no public hearing. Remember that.
