"The nation is facing a fiscal emergency. Debt is exploding and federal spending exceeds revenues by more than $1 trillion a year. To fix the problem, policymakers should pursue reforms on two paths.

First, policymakers should start identifying programs for termination, privatization, and devolution to the states. If a business conglomerate overexpanded and its spending ran ahead of revenues, prudent managers would start shedding low-value operations and refocusing on core activities. The federal government should do the same.

Second, policymakers should adopt new rules to bring greater discipline to federal budgeting. Right now, it’s anarchy on Capitol Hill with every member and interest group pushing for more dollars. Very few members consistently defend restraint.

The solution is for Congress to pass a law limiting annual increases in overall federal spending. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) recently introduced legislation to do just that. His SAFE Act (H.R. 5323) would cap annual growth in the federal budget to inflation plus population growth.

Smith’s bill, which has 34 co-sponsors, would cap growth in all spending including defense, nondefense, and entitlements. If spending this year was $3.70 trillion, inflation was 2 percent, and population growth was 1 percent, then federal spending next year would be limited to $3.81 trillion. If Congress failed to get spending under the limit by the end of the year, the president’s budget office would be required to apply an across-the-board cut, or sequester. I’ve discussed some of the details of such a spending limit in this congressional testimony.

Rep. Smith’s spending restraint legislation is exactly the type of budget process reform that Republicans should be championing. The idea of a cap on overall spending was supported by tea partiers in their Contract from America, and it’s easy for the average citizen to understand. The idea is simply that the government’s budget shouldn’t grow faster than the average family’s budget.

With a budget cap in place, it would be easy for voters and activists to know whether Congress was living up to a basic standard of fiscal prudence. If members of Congress tried to cheat on the legal spending limit, or tried to repeal it, citizens could impose political pressure on the spendthrifts. A simple and rigid budget limit would be a high-profile symbol of restraint for people to rally around and defend.

The chart below shows actual spending since 1990 and a budget limit of population growth plus inflation, with those variables averaged over the prior five years. In the 1990s, Congress generally kept spending under the limit. Over ten years, actual spending rose an average 4.2 percent annually, which was less than the 4.6 percent average growth of the limit. By contrast, spending growth during the 2000s has far exceeded the limit, illustrating where today’s huge deficits came from.

In sum, the nation can move back toward fiscal sanity by voting out the big spenders of both parties and voting in a reform-minded Congress to terminate programs and shrink the budget. Then, if Congress passed a law capping overall spending it would lock-in those cuts and make them harder to reverse later on. This two-part process could help ratchet-down the size of government over time.

*******GRAPH******

Notes: Rep. Smith does not specify a five-year average for his spending limit variables, as I’ve assumed here. Also note that federal spending is calendar year data from the National Income and Product Accounts, Table 3.2."

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/06/01/federal-spending-limit/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Cato-at-liberty+(Cato+at+Liberty)

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Entry #1,882

June 2, 2010
12:14 pm

(Photo) Captured In Sarasota, Fl

(Photo) CAPTURED IN SARASOTA, FL

http://boortz.com/nealz_nuze/2010/06/captured-in-sarasota-fl.html

2 Comments

Entry #1,881

June 2, 2010
11:24 am

"China, Japan launch world's biggest online marketplace

Found via Steve Quayle, Q News. Good for Chinese people heading toward free market capitalism!

_____

"China, Japan launch world's biggest online marketplace

by Staff Writers
Tokyo (AFP) June 1, 2010
Source Terra Daily

"China's largest retail website Taobao and Yahoo! Japan launched a joint service Tuesday in a deal expected to create the world's biggest online marketplace by harnessing Asia's surging ranks of e-consumers.

The service is expected to dwarf US rival eBay in terms of users and products on offer, attracting 250 million customers and offering 450 million products.

"This marks the birth of the world's largest e-commerce market," Masayoshi Son, chairman of Yahoo! Japan and CEO of mobile phone carrier Softbank, told a packed hall in a Tokyo hotel.

Online stores on Taobao will be able to offer products from China to Japanese consumers at Yahoo! Japan's China Mall, the companies said.

The new services will allow Internet users in both countries to buy and sell using systems and procedures that are familiar to them in their native languages, one of the biggest hurdles to doing business in either country.

The combined number of users on the new service is expected to eclipse the 90 million active users at US online marketplace eBay, which last year sold goods valued at 60 billion dollars.

Son is banking on Asia's exploding number of Internet users which he expects will account for 50 percent of the web in five years, compared to just 19 percent a decade ago.

He added that he expects the number of American users to fall to 12 percent of the global share.

Taobao is a subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group. Both SoftBank and US Internet company Yahoo! are shareholders in Alibaba.

Alibaba Group's Hong Kong-listed subsidiary Alibaba.com already has a joint venture with SoftBank called Alibaba.com Japan.

The cooperation with Yahoo! Japan is the latest effort by the Alibaba Group to expand in overseas markets.

Last month, its wholesale website Alibaba.com announced a new platform, AliExpress, allowing payments from users of US online payment service PayPal.

Online shopping in China has boomed in recent years, as the nation's more than 400 million Internet users -- the world's biggest online population -- become increasingly web-savvy.

Baidu, China's top search engine in terms of market share, said in January it would set up a joint venture with Japanese retail website Rakuten to launch a shopping mall targeting domestic web users in the second half of 2010."

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/China_Japan_launch_worlds_biggest_online_marketplace_999.html

Comments

Entry #1,880

June 2, 2010
10:00 am

"Morris: Obama doesn't have a clue

Nailed it. If people bothered doing research before the election instead of being lead around by slick advertisements we might have elected someone competent to lead this nation.

Palin had boots on the ground experience dealing with oil companies and no doubt would have sprung to action a bazillion times faster than Obama and remained on top of the problem informing us about what's happening.

If the super majority in charge has a clue they will begin impeachment proceedings based on Obama's total incompetence.

Obama was holding it when it broke and has absolutely no clue about how to fix the spill or anything else.

______________

"Morris: Obama doesn’t have a clue

By Dick Morris - 06/01/10 07:03 PM ET

Source TheHill.com

"Conservatives are so enraged at Obama’s socialism and radicalism that they are increasingly surprised to learn that he is incompetent as well. The sight of his blithering and blustering while the most massive oil spill in history moves closer to America’s beaches not only reminds one of Bush’s terrible performance during Katrina, but calls to mind Jimmy Carter’s incompetence in the face of the hostage crisis.

America is watching the president alternate between wringing his hands in helplessness and pointing his finger in blame when he should be solving the most pressing environmental problem America has faced in the past 50 years. We are watching generations of environmental protection swept away as marshes, fisheries, vacation spots, recreational beaches, wetlands, hatcheries and sanctuaries fall prey to the oil spill invasion. And, all the while, the president acts like a spectator, interrupting his basketball games only to excoriate BP for its failure to contain the spill.

The political fallout from the oil spill will, indeed, spill across party and ideological lines. The environmentalists of America cannot take heart from a president so obviously ignorant about how to protect our shores and so obstinately arrogant that he refuses to inform himself and take any responsibility.

All of this explains why the oil spill is seeping into his ratings among Democrats, dragging him down to levels we have not seen since Bush during the pit of the Iraq war. Conservatives may dislike Obama because he is a leftist. But liberals are coming to dislike him because he is not a competent progressive.

Meanwhile, the nation watches nervously as the same policies Obama has brought to our nation are failing badly and publicly in Europe. When Moody’s announces that it is considering downgrading bonds issued by the government of the United States of America, we find ourselves, suddenly, in deep trouble. We have had deficits before. But never have they so freaked investors that a ratings agency considered lowering its opinion of our solvency. Not since Alexander Hamilton assumed the states’ Revolutionary War debt has America’s willingness and ability to meet its financial obligations been as seriously questioned.

And the truth begins to dawn on all of us: Obama has no more idea how to work his way out of the economic mess into which his policies have plunged us than he does about how to clean up the oil spill that is destroying our southern coastline.

Both the financial crisis and the oil come ever closer to our shores — one from the east and the other from the south — and, between them, they loom as a testament to the incompetence of our government and of its president.

And, oddly, to his passivity as well. After pursuing a remarkably activist, if misguided and foolhardy, agenda, Obama seems not to know what to do and finds himself consigned to the roles of observer and critic.

America is getting the point that its president doesn’t have a clue.

He doesn’t know how to stop the oil from spilling. He is bereft of ideas about how to create jobs in the aftermath of the recession. He has no idea how to keep the European financial crisis contained. He has no program for repaying the massive debt hole into which he has dug our nation without tax increases he must know will only deepen the pit.

Some presidents have failed because of their stubbornness (Johnson and Bush-43). Others because of their character flaws (Clinton and Nixon). Still others because of their insensitivity to domestic problems (Bush-41). But now we have a president who is failing because he is incompetent. It is Jimmy Carter all over again.

Who would have thought that this president, so anxious to lead us and so focused on his specific agenda and ideas, would turn out not to know what he is doing?"

http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/dick-morris/100913-obama-doesnt-have-a-clue

2 Comments

Entry #1,879

June 1, 2010
4:14 pm

"Pelosi Says She Has a Duty to Pursue Policies in Keeping With The Values of Jesus, 'The Word Made F

The most interesting justification for communist redistribution I've ever heard. I always thought Jesus taught love, freedom, belief in our inherent personal abilities to create miracles in the same way he demonstrated by his own actions, and faith that those creations would become manifest. Feel free to correct me if my assumptions are incorrect.

____________

"Pelosi Says She Has a Duty to Pursue Policies in Keeping With The Values of Jesus, 'The Word Made Flesh'
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
By Nicholas Ballasy, Video Reporter

"(CNSNews.com) -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says she believes she must pursue public policies "in keeping with the values" of Jesus Christ, "The Word made Flesh."

Pelosi, who is a Catholic and who favors legalized abortion, voted against the ban on partial-birth abortion that was enacted into law in 2003.

At a May 6 Catholic Community Conference on Capitol Hill, the speaker said: “They ask me all the time, ‘What is your favorite this? What is your favorite that? What is your favorite that?’ And one time, ‘What is your favorite word?’ And I said, ‘My favorite word? That is really easy. My favorite word is the Word, is the Word. And that is everything. It says it all for us. And you know the biblical reference, you know the Gospel reference of the Word.”

“And that Word," Pelosi said, "is, we have to give voice to what that means in terms of public policy that would be in keeping with the values of the Word. The Word. Isn’t it a beautiful word when you think of it? It just covers everything. The Word.

“Fill it in with anything you want. But, of course, we know it means: ‘The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us.’ And that’s the great mystery of our faith. He will come again. He will come again. So, we have to make sure we’re prepared to answer in this life, or otherwise, as to how we have measured up.”

John 1:14 states, "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we saw His glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth."

The passage from the Gospel of John, Christians believe, refers to God (the Word) becoming a man, Jesus Christ, at the moment of the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary she was going to have a child. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “the Incarnation is the mystery and the dogma of the Word made Flesh.”

Section 423 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “We believe and confess that Jesus of Nazareth, born a Jew of a daughter of Israel at Bethlehem at the time of King Herod the Great and the emperor Caesar Augustus, a carpenter by trade, who died crucified in Jerusalem under the procurator Pontius Pilate during the reign of the emperor Tiberius, is the eternal Son of God made man. He 'came from God', 'descended from heaven', and 'came in the flesh'. For 'the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father … And from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace.”

After Pope Benedict XVI met privately with Speaker Pelosi in February 2009, the Vatican issued a statement saying: "His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the Church's consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death which enjoin all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in co-operation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development."

Pelosi’s office did not respond to CNSNews.com’s follow-up questions regarding the speaker’s statement that she seeks to make policy in conformance with the values of the Word made flesh."

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/66208

8 Comments

Entry #1,878

June 1, 2010
3:59 pm

"Police arrest Census taker

"Police arrest Census taker

by John Burnett And Peter Sur
Stephens Media
Source West Hawaii Today
Saturday, May 29, 2010 7:27 AM HST

"A battle is brewing between the state and federal governments over a Census taker arrested in Puna for misdemeanor trespassing.

The U.S. Attorney's office filed papers Thursday in federal court in Honolulu to take the case of 57-year-old Russell Haas out of 3rd District Court. That will pit the feds against local prosecutors.

"I'm looking to have it kept in state court," county Deputy Prosecutor Christopher Bridges said Friday.

Haas pleaded not guilty on April 8 to second-degree trespassing. He was arrested March 10 at 12:30 p.m. in in Hawaiian Acres, after a resident Haas says was an off-duty police officer allegedly refused to cooperate with the Census and called Puna police.

"When I opened his gate and walked in ... he stepped out of his garage and said, 'Please get off my property,'" Haas said Friday. Haas said he identified himself as a Census worker, and the man again requested for him to leave.

"I said, 'Can I please just give you the Census (form)?' And he didn't want it," Haas said. "He said he was going to call the cops, so I said, 'OK, fine.' We'd been trained to wait by the gate for the cops to get there and hand them the forms that we would have handed to the guy. The police then hand it to them and tell them, 'It's the law, do it.' Then everybody would walk away and it would be fine. That was what I expected.

"But when I was standing next to the gate talking to the guy, he pulls something out ...and out pops this little tin shield, and it falls and clatters on his driveway. And I realized he was telling me he was a cop."

"Then I went, 'Dude, if you're a cop, you know that you have to be in the Census. You have to be because you've sworn an oath to uphold and obey (the law).'"

Haas, who is a former New Jersey police officer, said while he and the man were talking across the gate, police "pulled up behind me, suddenly."

"I handed them the Census and expected them to hand them to this guy and say, 'That's it,'" Haas said. "They walked over and talked to him for a minute or two, then walked back to me ... and then stuffed it into my chest, and said, 'He doesn't have to enter your Census. He doesn't have to enter any Census. He doesn't have to fill out any of your forms or answer any of your questions. And if I were you, I'd get into my car and get the hell outta here, right now.'

"I turned to him and said, 'Or what?' And he said, 'I'll lock you up.'" And I turned back and said, 'So make your case.' They threw the cuffs on me, took me down to Keaau Police Station and I waited there until my daughter bailed me out." Haas' bail was $25.

According to the Census Bureau website, people are required by federal law to respond to the census. Title 13 of the U.S. Code says adults who refuse or willfully neglect to complete the questionnaire can be fined up to $100, and people who refuse to answer questions posed by census takers can be fined up to $5,000.

The identity of the man who refused to answer Haas' questions wasn't immediately known."

http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/articles/2010/05/29/local/local02.txt

2 Comments

Entry #1,877

June 1, 2010
12:33 pm

"Administration opposes Arizona law that penalizes hiring of illegal immigrants

"Administration opposes Arizona law that penalizes hiring of illegal immigrants

"The Obama administration on Friday urged the Supreme Court to review and set aside an Arizona law that sanctions employers who hire illegal immigrants, saying it would disrupt the "careful balance" that Congress struck in federal immigration law. ................."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/28/AR2010052804319.html?wprss=rss_print/asection

4 Comments

Entry #1,876

June 1, 2010
12:24 pm

"The U.N. gun grabber Global Small Arms Treaty threatens your right to self defense

"The U.N. gun grabber

Global Small Arms Treaty threatens your right to self defense

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

6:51 p.m., Thursday, May 27, 2010

"American gun owners might not feel besieged, but they should. This week, the Obama administration announced its support for the United Nations Small Arms Treaty. This international agreement poses real risks for freedom both in the United States and around the world by making it more difficult - if not outright illegal - for law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms. ........"

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/27/the-un-gun-grabber/

2 Comments

Entry #1,875

June 1, 2010
12:19 pm

"Why Donald Berwick is Dangerous to Your Health

May 26, 2010

"Why Donald Berwick is Dangerous to YourHealth

By HalScherz

Source RealClearPolitics

"President Obama's nomination of Donald Berwick M.D. to head HHS's Center forMedicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) eliminates any lingering doubt he seeksto impose state-run medicine and a European style health care system on America.But before Dr Berwick gets an official nod of approval for the federalgovernment's most important health care appointment -- the CMS covers over 100million Americans, has an annual $800 billion budget that is larger than thedefense department's and is the 2nd largest insurance company in the world, theUS Senate may want to consider the nominee's remarkable and quite literalattachment to the socialist health-care model.

"I am romantic about the NHS. I love it." Dr Berwick says about probably thebest-known case of socialized medicine -- Britain's National Health Service(NHS). "All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at healthcare inmy own country," he says about a US health care system that is "bloated," runsin "the darkness of private enterprise," and has "tremendous excesscapacity."

Rationing -- Dr Berwick uses the "r" word himself -- is why he much prefersthe "politically accountable" British system. About Britain's rationing board,The National Institute for Clinical Health Excellence (NICE), Dr Berwick says:"NICE is not just a national treasure; it is a global treasure"

In using "quality adjusted life years" per British pound to make treatmentdecisions, NICE mandates that Britain cannot afford to spend, except in unusualcases, more than $22,000 to extend a life 6 months. But despite its Orwellianacronym and properly polite British exterior, NICE harbors a deep bureaucraticaversion to extended care for the elderly and those with chronic disease, anapproach which Dr. Berwick explicitly endorses.

"The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accountingfor potentially 80% of the total health care bill out there. There is going tohave to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. Thedecision is not whether or not we will ration care. The decision is whether wewill ration with our eyes open."

This sort of "eyes-open" endorsement of rationing by government panels,especially for the chronically ill and those (Sarah Palin call your office) whoare "towards the end of their lives", has about it chilling echoes of an earliercontroversy over similar views held by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of WhiteHouse chief of Staff .

But even if Dr Berwick does see America doing too much for the elderly andthe chronically ill, his vision for health-care change hardly stops with justone demographic.

"Any healthcare funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane,must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the lessfortunate. Excellent healthcare is by definition redistributional".

Indeed, lest there be any doubt about the range of Dr Berwick's schemes for"redistribution" - code for transferring power to the government -- he makesclear how grand his vision for statist health care.

"There needs to be global budget caps on total healthcare spending fordesignated populations (ie-rationing)" Dr. Berwick says. "The simplest way toreach these goals is with a single payer system."

But if Dr Berwick leaves little doubt who is going to be in charge of theredistribution, global caps, and the single payer systems, he shows with his useof words like "politically accountable" or "democratic", the sort of verbal ticthat betrays his own understanding. He seeks not broad-based, bottom-updecision-making but top-own edicts from elite panels of enlightened and, ofcourse, "global" thinkers like himself that preempt decisions now made bydoctors and their patients.

And that is what those of us who are practicing physicians find so troublingabout Dr. Berwick's nomination. We see him as a White House Rose Garden,photo-op doctor with a borrowed white coat; an academic who runs a $58 millioninstitute, who analyzes numbers and reports and theories about populations butis now totally out of touch with his former peers and the patients that theytreat every day. And this is the sobering point-- Dr Berwick will not be therewith us at the patient's bedside looking them in the eye and telling them thatthe life saving treatment that they need is not approved because they don't fitinto the right demographic.

So, US Senators might ask Dr. Berwick why he "loves" and is "romantic" abouta British health care system that institutionalizes such moments. A health caresystem where patients have little or no choice about their provider and littleaccess to specialists. A health care system where waiting lists for visits tospecialists and for surgery can sometimes last a year, 40% of cancer patientsnever see an oncologist, rationing for kidney dialysis and open heart surgery isopen and explicit, and minimum wait times have been instituted for hospitaladmission (of 122 days) to reduce costs, leaving 750,000 people on waitlists.

"The cult of the state is dying" Ronald Reagan said in 1982. "The Era of BigGovernment is over" Bill Clinton declared a decade later. Both presidents wereonly acknowledging the progress of modern economics and its insight thatgovernment panels - because they lack the information built into market-basedsystems-- make far less wise decisions than individuals making their own choicesand benefiting competition. The failure of "global" and "redistributive"thinkers like Dr Berwick to see any of this is compelling evidence that in theend they are not about better health care but an avarice for power."

Dr. Scherz is a pediatric urological surgeon at Georgia Urology andChildren’s Healthcare of Atlanta, serves on the faculty of Emory UniversityMedical School and is president and cofounder ofDocs4PatientCare.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/05/26/why_donald_berwick_is_dangerous_to_your_health_105730.html

Comments

Entry #1,874

May 31, 2010
8:31 am

"Judges Re-assigned for 'Unacceptable Behavior' Exposed by FOX Chicago Investigation

"Judges Re-assigned for 'Unacceptable Behavior' Exposed by FOX Chicago Investigation

Four jurists singled out by county's top judge

Updated: Friday, 28 May 2010, 9:31 PM CDT
Published : Friday, 28 May 2010, 9:28 PM CDT

Source MyFoxChicago.com

"Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans has reassigned four judges in response to a FOX Chicago News/Better Government Association investigation into courtroom work habits.

The investigation found the judges leaving their assigned courtrooms well before the 4pm out time ordered by Evans two years ago. One judge, Gloria Chevere, was found soaking up the sun in her backyard at 2pm on a day when her court call ended early. ........"

http://www.myfoxchicago.com/dpp/news/metro/county-judges-reassigned-unacceptable-behavior-investigation-placko-20100528

2 Comments

Entry #1,873

May 29, 2010
11:26 pm