Obama’s Kickstarter Project For America
Well, it’s finally come to this: the only way out for America is to raise funds the way everyone else does these days. Donate to Obama’s Kickstarter, or America gets canceled. And vote for Zombama in 2020.
Austerity For Everyone, Except The Defense Industry
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
While Congress and the President fight it out over the debt ceiling and all of America quietly shudders over whether our economy will completely default on itself, at least one industry still hums along without a care in the world.
Amidst a fiscal crisis of apparently apocalyptic proportions, where the GOP demands dollar for dollar spending cuts from the budget in order to raise our debt limit, the Pentagon asked Congress for $264 million to cover part of a $771 million overrun on the F-35 program. The Hill reports Republican Senator John McCain let the news slip via Twitter, saying “Congress notified that first F-35 jets have cost overruns of $771M. Outrageous! Pentagon asking for $264M down payment now. Disgraceful.”
Leaders of the program Lockheed Martin spat back on Twitter, contending “The F-35 team is focused on reducing costs of the jets and is showing significant improvement in…
Democrats Actually SHRANK Spending & the Deficit
Despite a lot of intentional misinformation put out by the GOP and their propaganda ministry at Fox or partisan radio shows like Rush Limbaugh, it seems the actual numbers say something completely different about the nature of the economy. On the subject of both the deficit and government spending, they are similarly incorrect/deluded in part because they listen to a relentless droning of rightwing media nearly exclusively.
The actual RAW DATA from the non-partisan OMB communicates something completely different however.
Per AFP via Raw Story:
- The U.S. deficit actually SHRANK 9% in the last fiscal year, down 122 billion dollars over the previous year.
- Democrats also brought down the cost of the financial “rescue” of the banks by $240 billion.
- 2010 marked the largest DECLINE in government spending since 1984.
- And thanks to cutting corporate loopholes, revenue increased by 3%.
Of interest in the article as well, is this statement by Republican Judd Gregg, who said, “Just…
Social Security to Start Paying Out More Than It Takes In (Again)
Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont received the first Social Security payment on January 31, 1940.
I have never had any expectations I that ever will collect Social Security … let’s see how Congress deals with this crisis (again). This entitlement system (from an accounting standpoint) sure does hope you die before you get old…
STEPHEN OHLEMACHER writes on the AP via Yahoo News:
PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.
It’s time to start cashing them in.
For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits — billions more each year.
Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out…
U.S. Budget Deficit To Hit $1.3 Trillion In 2010
This is really out of control … how do you ever recover from that kind of deficit? Hard times are ahead in the U.S., the only question being how long can the government postpone the inevitable. This report at Marketwatch:
The U.S. budget deficit will hit $1.3 trillion in 2010, congressional budget analysts estimated Tuesday, in a fresh piece of grim news for President Barack Obama.
The estimate from the Congressional Budget Office assumes current laws and policies remain unchanged.
Economic growth will also probably be “muted” for the next few years, the CBO said in its budget outlook for 2010.
The CBO’s estimates come about a week before Obama transmits his fiscal 2011 budget to Congress, on Feb. 1. Obama is under mounting pressure to cut the deficit but also to create jobs, in the wake of last week’s victory in a special Senate election in Massachusetts by Republican Scott Brown.
In his first…
