It was, or so I thought, a dandy column idea: an imaginary, missing chapter of George W. Bush's "Decision Points," in which the former president would admit to having made the wrong call on taxes.
The imaginary but completely delusional: My inner Bush would not regret pushing for the tax cuts. But he would acknowledge - how hard could this be? - that Alan Greenspan was right when he suggested a trigger mechanism to cancel the cuts if the promised surplus failed to materialize.
If only . . .
Of course, that surplus was a mirage. Rather than presiding over erasure of the publicly held national debt, Bush watched it grow from $5.6 trillion to nearly $10 trillion.
Like the surplus, my quasi-apologetic chapter evaporated in the face of reality. I read "Decision Points," and it turns out that Bush is the Edith Piaf of fiscal policy: He regrets nothing.
"For years, I listened to politicians from both sides of the aisle allege that I had squandered the massive surplus I inherited. That never made sense," Bush writes. "Much of the surplus was an illusion, based on the mistaken assumption that the 1990s boom would continue. Once the recession and 9/11 hit, there was little surplus left."
Now he tells us? This illusory surplus was the cornerstone on which Bush built his economic policy. "You see, the growing surplus exists because taxes are too high, and government is charging more than it needs," Bush said in February 2001.
Far from sounding cautionary notes, the administration asserted its surplus estimates were, if anything, conservative. "If there's going to be a mistake, the likelihood is a mistake will be made on the other side of the scale, that more revenue will come in," press secretary Ari Fleischer said in March 2001. You know how that worked out.
"I took my responsibility to be a good fiscal steward seriously," Bush writes.
How's that? Bush chose to go to war, but, unlike any other wartime president, opted to pay the cost entirely with borrowed funds while pressing for additional tax cuts. He laments that he left behind "a serious long-term fiscal problem" of runaway entitlement spending but blames resistance from both parties in Congress - without acknowledging that he added an expensive and unpaid-for new entitlement, the Medicare prescription drug plan.
And those tax cuts. "It was true that tax cuts increase the deficit in the short term," Bush acknowledges. "But I believed the tax cuts, especially those on capital gains and dividends, would stimulate economic growth. The tax revenues from that growth, combined with spending restraint, would help lower the deficit."
This is cleverer than the usual supply-side formulation but still suffers from the tax-cuts-pay-for-themselves fallacy. Bush's own chief economic adviser, Gregory Mankiw, has estimated that over the long run, cuts on investment taxes generate enough economic growth to make up only half of lost revenue.
Bush offers up a handy chart showing that he spent less (as a percentage of the economy) and ran lower deficits than his two Republican predecessors, and compared reasonably well to Bill Clinton.
Except Bush's averages are misleading. For one thing, he cherry-picks his fiscal years. He gives himself credit for the 2001 surplus, 1.3 percent of gross domestic product, even though that course was largely set when he took office. At the other end, Bush takes no responsibility for his piece of the ghastly 2009 deficit, 9.9 percent. Subtracting bailouts and stimulus spending, on the theory that much of the former will be repaid and the latter happened on President Obama's watch, the 2009 deficit would have totaled 6.8 percent of GDP, the largest since World War II.
More important, the trajectory tells a story that is less kind to Bush. He took office after three years in which Clinton had overseen surpluses. After 2001, Bush presided over seven straight years of deficits.
In short, Bush inherited a budget in healthy shape. He left it in tatters. The faltering economy played a supporting role, but the chief factors were of Bush's making: his tax cuts, his wars, his prescription drug bill. Without these, the country would have been running surpluses during his tenure. The wars will wind down, but the price of the tax cuts and prescription drug bill will climb even higher over the next decade.
Some stewardship.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Racist AMERICA raises head again! Just can't take a black woman and a white man dancing hot!
Upset! High-Scoring Brandy Axed From 'Dancing'
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Brandy earned a perfect score for her Argentine tango on Monday's "Dancing With the Stars," only to learn Tuesday it would be her final dance in the competition.
The 31-year-old singer and actress was eliminated from the hit ABC dance-off just before next week's final showdown for the mirrorball trophy.
Jennifer Grey, Kyle Massey and Bristol Palin will compete for the prize next week.
Brandy was speechless when host Tom Bergeron announced she would be leaving the show.
"I don't know how to feel right now," she said. "It hasn't processed yet for me."
Moments later, she was shown crying.
Grey's professional partner, Derek Hough, didn't hide his surprise at Brandy's dismissal: His jaw dropped.
Brandy, who collected 57 points out of 60 on Monday, was pitted against Palin, who earned 53 points, at the end of Monday's episode for the last spot in the finals.
Judge Bruno Tonioli said he was shocked at the results.
"I'm so disappointed," he said. "Your freestyle, I was looking (forward) so much to see it."
Judges' scores are combined with viewer votes to determine which couple is ousted each week.
The Internet has been abuzz in recent days about how Palin, who has consistently landed at the bottom of the judges' leaderboard, has been able to remain on the show. Some have suggested that voters — particularly supporters of Sarah Palin — have been voting in blocs and manipulating the system.
Both Palins have denied any organized vote-getting tactics. Bristol Palin, 20, says voters support her despite lackluster performances "because I started with no experience in dancing or performing at all, and I've come a long way."
"People do connect with me because they think I'm real and I'm not typical Hollywood," she said.
Brandy said from the start of the "Dancing" season that she was aiming for the trophy.
"I hope to go to the finals," she said after Monday's performance, in comments that aired Tuesday. "In the most humblest way, that's where I feel that we belong. We've worked so hard. We want to go so bad."
Her professional partner, Maksim Chmerkovskiy, said after their dismissal that he appreciates that the show reflects the audience's tastes.
"People vote and their voices count," he said. "I love the fact that the show represents that. It represents the people's choice."
Palin, Massey and Grey will each perform their own no-rules, anything-goes freestyle dances next week. A new "Dancing" champ will be named on Nov. 23.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Brandy earned a perfect score for her Argentine tango on Monday's "Dancing With the Stars," only to learn Tuesday it would be her final dance in the competition.
The 31-year-old singer and actress was eliminated from the hit ABC dance-off just before next week's final showdown for the mirrorball trophy.
Jennifer Grey, Kyle Massey and Bristol Palin will compete for the prize next week.
Brandy was speechless when host Tom Bergeron announced she would be leaving the show.
"I don't know how to feel right now," she said. "It hasn't processed yet for me."
Moments later, she was shown crying.
Grey's professional partner, Derek Hough, didn't hide his surprise at Brandy's dismissal: His jaw dropped.
Brandy, who collected 57 points out of 60 on Monday, was pitted against Palin, who earned 53 points, at the end of Monday's episode for the last spot in the finals.
Judge Bruno Tonioli said he was shocked at the results.
"I'm so disappointed," he said. "Your freestyle, I was looking (forward) so much to see it."
Judges' scores are combined with viewer votes to determine which couple is ousted each week.
The Internet has been abuzz in recent days about how Palin, who has consistently landed at the bottom of the judges' leaderboard, has been able to remain on the show. Some have suggested that voters — particularly supporters of Sarah Palin — have been voting in blocs and manipulating the system.
Both Palins have denied any organized vote-getting tactics. Bristol Palin, 20, says voters support her despite lackluster performances "because I started with no experience in dancing or performing at all, and I've come a long way."
"People do connect with me because they think I'm real and I'm not typical Hollywood," she said.
Brandy said from the start of the "Dancing" season that she was aiming for the trophy.
"I hope to go to the finals," she said after Monday's performance, in comments that aired Tuesday. "In the most humblest way, that's where I feel that we belong. We've worked so hard. We want to go so bad."
Her professional partner, Maksim Chmerkovskiy, said after their dismissal that he appreciates that the show reflects the audience's tastes.
"People vote and their voices count," he said. "I love the fact that the show represents that. It represents the people's choice."
Palin, Massey and Grey will each perform their own no-rules, anything-goes freestyle dances next week. A new "Dancing" champ will be named on Nov. 23.
Ted Koppel: Olbermann, O'Reilly and the death of real news
To witness Keith Olbermann - the most opinionated among MSNBC's left-leaning, Fox-baiting, money-generating hosts - suspended even briefly last week for making financial contributions to Democratic political candidates seemed like a whimsical, arcane holdover from a long-gone era of television journalism, when the networks considered the collection and dissemination of substantive and unbiased news to be a public trust.
Back then, a policy against political contributions would have aimed to avoid even the appearance of partisanship. But today, when Olbermann draws more than 1 million like-minded viewers to his program every night precisely because he is avowedly, unabashedly and monotonously partisan, it is not clear what misdemeanor his donations constituted. Consistency?
We live now in a cable news universe that celebrates the opinions of Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly - individuals who hold up the twin pillars of political partisanship and who are encouraged to do so by their parent organizations because their brand of analysis and commentary is highly profitable.
The commercial success of both Fox News and MSNBC is a source of nonpartisan sadness for me. While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic. It is, though, the natural outcome of a growing sense of national entitlement. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's oft-quoted observation that "everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts," seems almost quaint in an environment that flaunts opinions as though they were facts.
And so, among the many benefits we have come to believe the founding fathers intended for us, the latest is news we can choose. Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is unattainable, Fox News and MSNBC no longer even attempt it. They show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the political spectrum would like it to be. This is to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone.
It is also part of a pervasive ethos that eschews facts in favor of an idealized reality. The fashion industry has apparently known this for years: Esquire magazine recently found that men's jeans from a variety of name-brand manufacturers are cut large but labeled small. The actual waist sizes are anywhere from three to six inches roomier than their labels insist.
Perhaps it doesn't matter that we are being flattered into believing what any full-length mirror can tell us is untrue. But when our accountants, bankers and lawyers, our doctors and our politicians tell us only what we want to hear, despite hard evidence to the contrary, we are headed for disaster. We need only look at our housing industry, our credit card debt, the cost of two wars subsidized by borrowed money, and the rising deficit to understand the dangers of entitlement run rampant. We celebrate truth as a virtue, but only in the abstract. What we really need in our search for truth is a commodity that used to be at the heart of good journalism: facts - along with a willingness to present those facts without fear or favor.
To the degree that broadcast news was a more virtuous operation 40 years ago, it was a function of both fear and innocence. Network executives were afraid that a failure to work in the "public interest, convenience and necessity," as set forth in the Radio Act of 1927, might cause the Federal Communications Commission to suspend or even revoke their licenses. The three major broadcast networks pointed to their news divisions (which operated at a loss or barely broke even) as evidence that they were fulfilling the FCC's mandate. News was, in a manner of speaking, the loss leader that permitted NBC, CBS and ABC to justify the enormous profits made by their entertainment divisions.
On the innocence side of the ledger, meanwhile, it never occurred to the network brass that news programming could be profitable.
Until, that is, CBS News unveiled its "60 Minutes" news magazine in 1968. When, after three years or so, "60 Minutes" turned a profit (something no television news program had previously achieved), a light went on, and the news divisions of all three networks came to be seen as profit centers, with all the expectations that entailed.
I recall a Washington meeting many years later at which Michael Eisner, then the chief executive of Disney, ABC's parent company, took questions from a group of ABC News correspondents and compared our status in the corporate structure to that of the Disney artists who create the company's world-famous cartoons. (He clearly and sincerely intended the analogy to flatter us.) Even they, Eisner pointed out, were expected to make budget cuts; we would have to do the same.
I mentioned several names to Eisner and asked if he recognized any. He did not. They were, I said, ABC correspondents and cameramen who had been killed or wounded while on assignment. While appreciating the enormous talent of the corporation's cartoonists, I pointed out that working on a television crew, covering wars, revolutions and natural disasters, was different. The suggestion was not well received.
The parent companies of all three networks would ultimately find a common way of dealing with the risk and expense inherent in operating news bureaus around the world: They would eliminate them. Peter Jennings and I, who joined ABC News within a year of each other in the early 1960s, were profoundly influenced by our years as foreign correspondents. When we became the anchors and managing editors of our respective programs, we tried to make sure foreign news remained a major ingredient. It was a struggle.
Peter called me one afternoon in the mid-'90s to ask whether we at "Nightline" had been receiving the same inquiries that he and his producers were getting at "World News Tonight." We had, indeed, been getting calls from company bean-counters wanting to know how many times our program had used a given overseas bureau in the preceding year. This data in hand, the accountants constructed the simplest of equations: Divide the cost of running a bureau by the number of television segments it produced. The cost, inevitably, was deemed too high to justify leaving the bureau as it was. Trims led to cuts and, in most cases, to elimination.
The networks say they still maintain bureaus around the world, but whereas in the 1960s I was one of 20 to 30 correspondents working out of fully staffed offices in more than a dozen major capitals, for the most part, a "bureau" now is just a local fixer who speaks English and can facilitate the work of a visiting producer or a correspondent in from London.
Much of the American public used to gather before the electronic hearth every evening, separate but together, while Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Frank Reynolds and Howard K. Smith offered relatively unbiased accounts of information that their respective news organizations believed the public needed to know. The ritual permitted, and perhaps encouraged, shared perceptions and even the possibility of compromise among those who disagreed.
It was an imperfect, untidy little Eden of journalism where reporters were motivated to gather facts about important issues. We didn't know that we could become profit centers. No one had bitten into that apple yet.
The transition of news from a public service to a profitable commodity is irreversible. Legions of new media present a vista of unrelenting competition. Advertisers crave young viewers, and these young viewers are deemed to be uninterested in hard news, especially hard news from abroad. This is felicitous, since covering overseas news is very expensive. On the other hand, the appetite for strongly held, if unsubstantiated, opinion is demonstrably high. And such talk, as they say, is cheap.
Broadcast news has been outflanked and will soon be overtaken by scores of other media options. The need for clear, objective reporting in a world of rising religious fundamentalism, economic interdependence and global ecological problems is probably greater than it has ever been. But we are no longer a national audience receiving news from a handful of trusted gatekeepers; we're now a million or more clusters of consumers, harvesting information from like-minded providers.
As you may know, Olbermann returned to his MSNBC program after just two days of enforced absence. (Given cable television's short attention span, two days may well have seemed like an "indefinite suspension.") He was gracious about the whole thing, acknowledging at least the historical merit of the rule he had broken: "It's not a stupid rule," he said. "It needs to be adapted to the realities of 21st-century journalism."
There is, after all, not much of a chance that 21st-century journalism will be adapted to conform with the old rules. Technology and the market are offering a tantalizing array of channels, each designed to fill a particular niche - sports, weather, cooking, religion - and an infinite variety of news, prepared and seasoned to reflect our taste, just the way we like it. As someone used to say in a bygone era, "That's the way it is."
Ted Koppel, who was managing editor of ABC's "Nightline" from 1980 to 2005, is a contributing analyst for "BBC World News America."
Back then, a policy against political contributions would have aimed to avoid even the appearance of partisanship. But today, when Olbermann draws more than 1 million like-minded viewers to his program every night precisely because he is avowedly, unabashedly and monotonously partisan, it is not clear what misdemeanor his donations constituted. Consistency?
We live now in a cable news universe that celebrates the opinions of Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly - individuals who hold up the twin pillars of political partisanship and who are encouraged to do so by their parent organizations because their brand of analysis and commentary is highly profitable.
The commercial success of both Fox News and MSNBC is a source of nonpartisan sadness for me. While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic. It is, though, the natural outcome of a growing sense of national entitlement. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's oft-quoted observation that "everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts," seems almost quaint in an environment that flaunts opinions as though they were facts.
And so, among the many benefits we have come to believe the founding fathers intended for us, the latest is news we can choose. Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is unattainable, Fox News and MSNBC no longer even attempt it. They show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the political spectrum would like it to be. This is to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone.
It is also part of a pervasive ethos that eschews facts in favor of an idealized reality. The fashion industry has apparently known this for years: Esquire magazine recently found that men's jeans from a variety of name-brand manufacturers are cut large but labeled small. The actual waist sizes are anywhere from three to six inches roomier than their labels insist.
Perhaps it doesn't matter that we are being flattered into believing what any full-length mirror can tell us is untrue. But when our accountants, bankers and lawyers, our doctors and our politicians tell us only what we want to hear, despite hard evidence to the contrary, we are headed for disaster. We need only look at our housing industry, our credit card debt, the cost of two wars subsidized by borrowed money, and the rising deficit to understand the dangers of entitlement run rampant. We celebrate truth as a virtue, but only in the abstract. What we really need in our search for truth is a commodity that used to be at the heart of good journalism: facts - along with a willingness to present those facts without fear or favor.
To the degree that broadcast news was a more virtuous operation 40 years ago, it was a function of both fear and innocence. Network executives were afraid that a failure to work in the "public interest, convenience and necessity," as set forth in the Radio Act of 1927, might cause the Federal Communications Commission to suspend or even revoke their licenses. The three major broadcast networks pointed to their news divisions (which operated at a loss or barely broke even) as evidence that they were fulfilling the FCC's mandate. News was, in a manner of speaking, the loss leader that permitted NBC, CBS and ABC to justify the enormous profits made by their entertainment divisions.
On the innocence side of the ledger, meanwhile, it never occurred to the network brass that news programming could be profitable.
Until, that is, CBS News unveiled its "60 Minutes" news magazine in 1968. When, after three years or so, "60 Minutes" turned a profit (something no television news program had previously achieved), a light went on, and the news divisions of all three networks came to be seen as profit centers, with all the expectations that entailed.
I recall a Washington meeting many years later at which Michael Eisner, then the chief executive of Disney, ABC's parent company, took questions from a group of ABC News correspondents and compared our status in the corporate structure to that of the Disney artists who create the company's world-famous cartoons. (He clearly and sincerely intended the analogy to flatter us.) Even they, Eisner pointed out, were expected to make budget cuts; we would have to do the same.
I mentioned several names to Eisner and asked if he recognized any. He did not. They were, I said, ABC correspondents and cameramen who had been killed or wounded while on assignment. While appreciating the enormous talent of the corporation's cartoonists, I pointed out that working on a television crew, covering wars, revolutions and natural disasters, was different. The suggestion was not well received.
The parent companies of all three networks would ultimately find a common way of dealing with the risk and expense inherent in operating news bureaus around the world: They would eliminate them. Peter Jennings and I, who joined ABC News within a year of each other in the early 1960s, were profoundly influenced by our years as foreign correspondents. When we became the anchors and managing editors of our respective programs, we tried to make sure foreign news remained a major ingredient. It was a struggle.
Peter called me one afternoon in the mid-'90s to ask whether we at "Nightline" had been receiving the same inquiries that he and his producers were getting at "World News Tonight." We had, indeed, been getting calls from company bean-counters wanting to know how many times our program had used a given overseas bureau in the preceding year. This data in hand, the accountants constructed the simplest of equations: Divide the cost of running a bureau by the number of television segments it produced. The cost, inevitably, was deemed too high to justify leaving the bureau as it was. Trims led to cuts and, in most cases, to elimination.
The networks say they still maintain bureaus around the world, but whereas in the 1960s I was one of 20 to 30 correspondents working out of fully staffed offices in more than a dozen major capitals, for the most part, a "bureau" now is just a local fixer who speaks English and can facilitate the work of a visiting producer or a correspondent in from London.
Much of the American public used to gather before the electronic hearth every evening, separate but together, while Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Frank Reynolds and Howard K. Smith offered relatively unbiased accounts of information that their respective news organizations believed the public needed to know. The ritual permitted, and perhaps encouraged, shared perceptions and even the possibility of compromise among those who disagreed.
It was an imperfect, untidy little Eden of journalism where reporters were motivated to gather facts about important issues. We didn't know that we could become profit centers. No one had bitten into that apple yet.
The transition of news from a public service to a profitable commodity is irreversible. Legions of new media present a vista of unrelenting competition. Advertisers crave young viewers, and these young viewers are deemed to be uninterested in hard news, especially hard news from abroad. This is felicitous, since covering overseas news is very expensive. On the other hand, the appetite for strongly held, if unsubstantiated, opinion is demonstrably high. And such talk, as they say, is cheap.
Broadcast news has been outflanked and will soon be overtaken by scores of other media options. The need for clear, objective reporting in a world of rising religious fundamentalism, economic interdependence and global ecological problems is probably greater than it has ever been. But we are no longer a national audience receiving news from a handful of trusted gatekeepers; we're now a million or more clusters of consumers, harvesting information from like-minded providers.
As you may know, Olbermann returned to his MSNBC program after just two days of enforced absence. (Given cable television's short attention span, two days may well have seemed like an "indefinite suspension.") He was gracious about the whole thing, acknowledging at least the historical merit of the rule he had broken: "It's not a stupid rule," he said. "It needs to be adapted to the realities of 21st-century journalism."
There is, after all, not much of a chance that 21st-century journalism will be adapted to conform with the old rules. Technology and the market are offering a tantalizing array of channels, each designed to fill a particular niche - sports, weather, cooking, religion - and an infinite variety of news, prepared and seasoned to reflect our taste, just the way we like it. As someone used to say in a bygone era, "That's the way it is."
Ted Koppel, who was managing editor of ABC's "Nightline" from 1980 to 2005, is a contributing analyst for "BBC World News America."
OOOPS! Proof Americans are real stupid or just mean to allow this horse to plow on!!
Bristol Palin Backlash: Is the Tea Party Stuffing the 'DWTS' Ballot Box?
Despite Some of the Lowest Marks From Judges, Bristol Palin Has Survived on Viewer Votes
Bristol Palin pasa-dobled her way to her highest scores of the season on "Dancing With the Stars" Monday night, but her journey, like most things Palin, has not been without controversy.
The daughter of political powerhouse Sarah Palin, has consistently landed at the bottom of the leader board, yet still managed to earn a coveted spot in the semi-finals.
There's a debate brewing over whether Bristol Palin is being kept alive on "DWTS" by her pluck and charm, or by way of her famous mom's political pull with Republicans and the Tea Party.
Despite Some of the Lowest Marks From Judges, Bristol Palin Has Survived on Viewer Votes
Bristol Palin pasa-dobled her way to her highest scores of the season on "Dancing With the Stars" Monday night, but her journey, like most things Palin, has not been without controversy.
The daughter of political powerhouse Sarah Palin, has consistently landed at the bottom of the leader board, yet still managed to earn a coveted spot in the semi-finals.
There's a debate brewing over whether Bristol Palin is being kept alive on "DWTS" by her pluck and charm, or by way of her famous mom's political pull with Republicans and the Tea Party.
PALIN LOVERS - WHY? She might be fine looking but the voice!
Murkowski: Palin Lacks 'Intellectual Curiosity'
Here's one hatchet that's not getting buried:
U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, who leads Joe Miller by more than 1,700 votes in her reelection campaign, said on Monday that Sarah Palin is unfit to be president because she lacks "leadership qualities" and "intellectual curiosity."
"You know, she was my governor for two years, for just about two years there, and I don't think that she enjoyed governing," Murkowski told Katie Couric. "I don't think she liked to get down into the policy."
Read it at CBS News
Here's one hatchet that's not getting buried:
U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, who leads Joe Miller by more than 1,700 votes in her reelection campaign, said on Monday that Sarah Palin is unfit to be president because she lacks "leadership qualities" and "intellectual curiosity."
"You know, she was my governor for two years, for just about two years there, and I don't think that she enjoyed governing," Murkowski told Katie Couric. "I don't think she liked to get down into the policy."
Read it at CBS News
Does anyone give a damn? The fall of the USA empire is near??
42 Million Americans on Food Stamps
And this is happening in America?
Hunger rates in the U.S. rose sharply in 2008 to their highest levels since the U.S. Department of Agriculture started tracking the number in 1995, and they’ve held steady ever since.
As many as 1 million American families with children were forced to go without eating at some point in the past year.
The number of Americans on Food Stamps is up 10 million from a year ago, to 42 million people. "I know meeting with, whether it's government offices across the country or with food pantries and food banks—in all of those instances people have reflected the fact, to me, anecdotally that they are serving people who never envisioned in their lifetimes needing to turn to either a state or a county for federal assistance or to a food bank for assistance,” said Mark Nord, a researcher with USDA.
And the problem is set to get worse—economic forecasters, the U.S. government among them, predict a rise in food prices in 2011.
Read it at ABC News
And this is happening in America?
Hunger rates in the U.S. rose sharply in 2008 to their highest levels since the U.S. Department of Agriculture started tracking the number in 1995, and they’ve held steady ever since.
As many as 1 million American families with children were forced to go without eating at some point in the past year.
The number of Americans on Food Stamps is up 10 million from a year ago, to 42 million people. "I know meeting with, whether it's government offices across the country or with food pantries and food banks—in all of those instances people have reflected the fact, to me, anecdotally that they are serving people who never envisioned in their lifetimes needing to turn to either a state or a county for federal assistance or to a food bank for assistance,” said Mark Nord, a researcher with USDA.
And the problem is set to get worse—economic forecasters, the U.S. government among them, predict a rise in food prices in 2011.
Read it at ABC News
The GOP it's all about them! Bastards think they are entitled and screw the rest of the people. WHY DO WE NOT HAVE SINGLE PAY HEALTH CARE FOR EVERYONE? Even Medicare for all would be better than the current bloodsucking system! I'm just sayin'!
GOP frosh: Where's my health care?
A conservative Maryland physician elected to Congress on an anti-Obamacare platform surprised fellow freshmen at a Monday orientation session by demanding to know why his government-subsidized health care plan takes a month to kick in.
Republican Andy Harris, an anesthesiologist who defeated freshman Democrat Frank Kratovil on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, reacted incredulously when informed that federal law mandated that his government-subsidized health care policy would take effect on Feb. 1 – 28 days after his Jan. 3rd swearing-in.
“He stood up and asked the two ladies who were answering questions why it had to take so long, what he would do without 28 days of health care,” said a congressional staffer who saw the exchange. The benefits session, held behind closed doors, drew about 250 freshman members, staffers and family members to the Capitol Visitors Center auditorium late Monday morning,”.
“Harris then asked if he could purchase insurance from the government to cover the gap,” added the aide, who was struck by the similarity to Harris’s request and the public option he denounced as a gateway to socialized medicine.
Harris, a Maryland state senator who works at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and several hospitals on the Eastern Shore, also told the audience, “This is the only employer I’ve ever worked for where you don’t get coverage the first day you are employed,” his spokeswoman Anna Nix told POLITICO.
Under COBRA law, Harris can pay a premium to extend his current health insurance an additional month.
Nix said Harris, who is the father of five, wasn’t being hypocritical – he was just pointing out the inefficiency of government-run health care.
Harris hammered Kratovil on health care throughout a bitter fall campaign, despite the fact that the conservative Democrat voted twice against the reform package backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), a close Kratovil ally.
“Although he voted against Obamacare, Mr. Kratovil refuses to commit to its repeal. Dr. Harris understands that the Obama-Pelosi-Hoyer agenda threatens to pull the plug on America's long-term health," Harris said in an Oct. 30 statement. “"In Washington, I will never vote to raise taxes, I will fight to repeal health-care reform, and I will work to balance the budget."
A conservative Maryland physician elected to Congress on an anti-Obamacare platform surprised fellow freshmen at a Monday orientation session by demanding to know why his government-subsidized health care plan takes a month to kick in.
Republican Andy Harris, an anesthesiologist who defeated freshman Democrat Frank Kratovil on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, reacted incredulously when informed that federal law mandated that his government-subsidized health care policy would take effect on Feb. 1 – 28 days after his Jan. 3rd swearing-in.
“He stood up and asked the two ladies who were answering questions why it had to take so long, what he would do without 28 days of health care,” said a congressional staffer who saw the exchange. The benefits session, held behind closed doors, drew about 250 freshman members, staffers and family members to the Capitol Visitors Center auditorium late Monday morning,”.
“Harris then asked if he could purchase insurance from the government to cover the gap,” added the aide, who was struck by the similarity to Harris’s request and the public option he denounced as a gateway to socialized medicine.
Harris, a Maryland state senator who works at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and several hospitals on the Eastern Shore, also told the audience, “This is the only employer I’ve ever worked for where you don’t get coverage the first day you are employed,” his spokeswoman Anna Nix told POLITICO.
Under COBRA law, Harris can pay a premium to extend his current health insurance an additional month.
Nix said Harris, who is the father of five, wasn’t being hypocritical – he was just pointing out the inefficiency of government-run health care.
Harris hammered Kratovil on health care throughout a bitter fall campaign, despite the fact that the conservative Democrat voted twice against the reform package backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), a close Kratovil ally.
“Although he voted against Obamacare, Mr. Kratovil refuses to commit to its repeal. Dr. Harris understands that the Obama-Pelosi-Hoyer agenda threatens to pull the plug on America's long-term health," Harris said in an Oct. 30 statement. “"In Washington, I will never vote to raise taxes, I will fight to repeal health-care reform, and I will work to balance the budget."
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