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Obama's Spending a Shaky Foundation for Consumer Confidence
Tweet Share on Facebook May 12, 2009 Comment (3)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
On Monday the White House revised the upcoming year's deficit projections upward to nearly $2 trillion, a single year record. Budget Director Peter Orszag blamed the gap in expenditures over receipts on the economic crisis Barack Obama inherited upon taking office.
Strictly speaking, this is an inaccurate assessment in that it fails to acknowledge the record amount of spending Obama and the Democrats in Congress have proposed, promoted, and authorized in an effort to stimulate the economy. To them, as it is for many of Obama's supporters around the country, the bad news is still all Bush's fault.
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Obama Must Stop Blaming Bush, Accept Responsibility for Failing Economic Policies
Tweet Share on Facebook May 11, 2009 Comment (219)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
According to White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, as Reuters reported Monday, "High U.S. budget deficits are being driven by an economic crisis that President Barack Obama inherited."
That really says it all.
It is true that the U.S. economy was in bad shape when Obama came into office. But he and his top appointees want us to believe that their preferred solution—pushing huge increases in federal spending in his so-called economic recovery act and his budget for the upcoming fiscal year though Congress to prime the Keynesian pump, putting money in the hands of their political constituencies—are in no way related to the just announced record $1.8 trillion federal deficit.
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Obama Offers Unserious Spending Cuts. Congressional Democrats Reject Them Anyway.
Tweet Share on Facebook May 8, 2009 Comment (2)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Having surfed across his first 100 days on a flood of new spending, President Barack Obama is now trying to tack back toward the center. Or at least he is trying to look like he is trying to.
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New World Population Numbers Have a Big Impact on Social Security, Foreign Policy
Tweet Share on Facebook May 7, 2009 Comment (40)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The latest issue of the Wilson Quarterly, the in-house publication of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars based in Washington, D.C., includes a provocative analysis of global demographic trends that challenges the conventional assumptions about where the planet is headed.
Written by Martin Walker, a Wilson Center senior scholar and former editor-in-chief of United Press International, "The World's New Numbers" walks through global birthrates in a way that suggests many dire predictions—for example, the idea that wave after wave of Muslim immigration into Europe will eventually overwhelm the native-born populations—may be flat wrong and that policymakers need to begin now to revise their assumptions about the future.
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Democrats Are Foolish to Humiliate Arlen Specter
Tweet Share on Facebook May 6, 2009 Comment (20)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Now just one vote shy of a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority, Senate Democrats have demonstrated to the world that their increasing hubris has clouded their judgment.
Reacting to a forth-coming New York Times magazine story in which the newest member of their caucus jokes he hopes Minnesota Republican Sen. Norm Coleman (who is currently locked in a protracted political and legal battle with challenger Al Franken over who won the election there last November) is returned to the office, members of the Senate Democratic Caucus voted Tuesday night to strip Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter of his 29-years of seniority. That makes him the party's most junior member, and the most junior member of every committee on which he serves.
In a place like the Senate, where tradition rules, stripping Specter of his seniority is a very real, very severe punishment. And, according to Specter, it also violates the deal he made with Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., when he agreed to cross the aisle.
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House Democrats' "No" on Guantanamo Closure a Stunning Rebuke to Obama
Tweet Share on Facebook May 5, 2009 Comment (12)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
President Barack Obama experience his first congressional hiccup Monday when Democrats in the House failed to back his efforts to close the U.S.-run detention facility housing suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. According to Tuesday's Washington Times, House Democrats "rejected Mr. Obama's request for $81 million to close the detention center" as part of a war-funding bill, "saying the White House lacks a plan to safely relocate the roughly 240 terrorist suspects held on the island."
Obama ordered the facility closed during a flurry of activity over his presidency's first days. Nevertheless, the order to close the detention center was not accompanied by a plan to do so, something that has provoked considerable criticism from congressional Republicans.
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Newt Gingrich, as Life Coach, Offers Success Story Based on 5 Principles
Tweet Share on Facebook May 4, 2009 Comment (3)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has rarely strayed from the public's eye since leaving the House of Representatives more than a decade ago. The author of several books, fiction and nonfiction, Gingrich is now adding "life coach" to his list of accomplishments.
With daughter Jackie Cushman, Gingrich has coauthored the forthcoming 5 Principles for a Successful Life, a book inviting readers to re-examine the purpose and goals of their daily activities with a focus on increasing personal productivity and achieving success.
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Gov. David Paterson's $300,000 Lawsuit Gives Republicans New Hope in New York
Tweet Share on Facebook May 1, 2009 Comment (3)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
David Paterson, the accidental governor of New York State, is making it easier and easier for the Republicans to win back the governorship in 2010. At first he drew high approval numbers for the way he stepped into the state's highest office after Elliot Spitzer, his predecessor and fellow Democrat, resigned from office over issues related to his dalliance in a Washington, D.C., hotel room with a paid escort. And people took his side when NBC's Saturday Night Live, sometimes the arbiter of the nation's political humor, poked fun at his being legally blind in a sketch that was anything but funny.
But then Paterson himself performed in a skit where he mocked a person with disabilities, which sort of destroys the claim to moral outrage he wielded to good effect following the SNL incident. And now, reports the New York Post, Paterson has just cost New York State taxpayers $300,000 as the result of a racial discrimination lawsuit.
