Democrats

Obama Changes Tune on Paying for Unemployment Benefits Extension – Political Hotsheet – CBS News

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In two speeches over the last week, Mr. Obama argued that in the past, presidents and Congresses of both parties have treated unemployment insurance for what it is: an emergency expenditure.

“Suddenly, Republican leaders want to change that,” he said.

He portrayed Republicans as hypocrites for demanding that jobless benefits be paid for but not applying the same standard to their call for an extension of Bush Administration tax cuts that will expire this year.

“So after years of championing policies that turned a record surplus into a massive deficit, including a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, they’ve finally decided to make their stand on the backs of the unemployed,” the president said last Saturday in his radio/internet address.

But Republicans were quick to remind Mr. Obama what he said after signing a previous extension of unemployment benefits on November 6th of last year.

“Now, it’s important to note that the bill I signed will not add to our deficit. It is fully paid for, and so it is fiscally responsible,” he said.

So eight months ago, he said paying for the benefits was the right thing to do, but now he sees no need to do so.

Asked about the contradiction, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said he needed to examine what Mr. Obama said last November and would get back to this reporter. He didn’t.

Obama Changes Tune on Paying for Unemployment Benefits Extension – Political Hotsheet – CBS News.

My Way News – Hoyer: Comprehensive health bill may be no go

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Democratic congressional leaders confronted the reality Tuesday that they may not be able to pass the comprehensive health care overhaul sought by President Barack Obama. Republican leaders prepared to do everything in their power to make sure they cant.

Democrats saw the sweeping health bill that Obama unveiled ahead of a bipartisan health care summit Thursday as their last, best chance at a top-to-bottom remake of the nations health care system that would usher in near-universal health coverage. But some were clear-eyed about the difficulties after a year of corrosive debate and the loss of their filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate.

via My Way News – Hoyer: Comprehensive health bill may be no go.

Class Warfare’s Next Target: 401k Savings

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You did the responsible thing. You saved in your IRA or 401(k) to support your retirement, when you could have spent that money on another vacation, or an upscale car, or fancier clothes and jewelry. But now Washington is developing plans for your retirement savings.

BusinessWeek reports that the Treasury and Labor departments are asking for public comment on “the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams.”

In plain English, the idea is for the government to take your retirement savings in return for a promise to pay you some monthly benefit in your retirement years.

They will tell you that you are “investing” your money in U.S. Treasury bonds. But they will use your money immediately to pay for their unprecedented trillion-dollar budget deficits, leaving nothing to back up their political promises, just as they have raided the Social Security trust funds.

Read the rest here…

Investors.com – Class Warfare’s Next Target: 401k Savings.

The great global warming collapse – The Globe and Mail

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…the glacier story was reported around the world. Last December, a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental pressure group, warned, “The deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty.” To dramatize their country's plight, Nepal's top politicians strapped on oxygen tanks and held a cabinet meeting on Mount Everest.

But the claim was rubbish, and the world's top glaciologists knew it. It was based not on rigorously peer-reviewed science but on an anecdotal report by the WWF itself. When its background came to light on the eve of Copenhagen, Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, shrugged it off. But now, even leading scientists and environmental groups admit the IPCC is facing a crisis of credibility that makes the Climategate affair look like small change.

“The global warming movement as we have known it is dead,” the brilliant analyst Walter Russell Mead says in his blog on The American Interest. It was done in by a combination of bad science and bad politics.

The impetus for the Copenhagen conference was that the science makes it imperative for us to act. But even if that were true – and even if we knew what to do – a global deal was never in the cards. As Mr. Mead writes, “The global warming movement proposed a complex set of international agreements involving vast transfers of funds, intrusive regulations in national economies, and substantial changes to the domestic political economies of most countries on the planet.” Copenhagen was never going to produce a breakthrough. It was a dead end.

via The great global warming collapse – The Globe and Mail.

N.J. loses $70B in wealth during five years as residents depart (for lower taxes)

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“The wealth is not being replaced,” said John Havens, who directed the study. “It’s above and beyond the general trend that is affecting the rest of the northeast.”

This was not always the case. The study – the first on interstate wealth migration in the country — noted the state actually saw an influx of $98 billion in the five years preceding 2004. The exodus of wealth, then, local experts and economists concluded, was a reaction to a series of changes in the state’s tax structure — including increases in the income, sales, property and “millionaire” taxes.

“This study makes it crystal clear that New Jersey’s tax policies are resulting in a significant decline in the state’s wealth,” said Dennis Bone, chairman of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce and president of Verizon New Jersey.

via N.J. loses $70B in wealth during five years as residents depart | New Jersey Business – – NJ.com.

Vulnerable Dems seek distance from Obama – baltimoresun.com

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Heading into an election season in which Republicans are trying to tie Democrats to Obama’s unpopular policies, Obama’s budget gives his fellow Democrats an unlikely campaign tool — a catalogue of ways to establish their distance from controversial aspects of his administration.

It is a time-tested campaign tactic for politicians to declare their independence of party leaders. But the tactic is particularly important for Democrats this year, because their party dominates Washington, and being an insider is a political liability in an anti-incumbent climate.

read the rest here… Vulnerable Dems seek distance from Obama – baltimoresun.com.

Investors.com – A U.S. ClimateGate?

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E. Michael Smith, a computer programming expert who worked with D’Aleo, said he found “patterns in the input data from NCDC that looked liked dramatic and selective deletions of thermometers from cold locations.” The more he looked, the more he found “patterns of deletion that could not be accidental.”

Stations in places such as the Andes and Bolivia have virtually vanished, meaning, according to D’Aleo, temperatures from these areas are now “determined by interpolation from stations hundreds of miles away on the coast or in the Amazon.” He says it’s as if Minneapolis stopped reporting and its average temperature was extrapolated from readings in St. Louis and Kansas City.

read the rest here… Investors.com – A U.S. ClimateGate?.