I hate to tell her, but it’s not working…
A great nugget from the leaked book by a former top aide to Sarah Palin, courtesy of Josh Green: Even though Palin had Lasik surgery to correct her vision, she still wears glasses to “look smarter.”
From Politico via Why Palin Wears Glasses.
This is so simple, but the GOP has twisted it out of shape…
I repeat, for the 5 millionth time: Social Security is not the problem. It is sound!
Social Security benefits are entirely self-financing. They are paid for with payroll taxes collected from workers and their employers throughout their careers. These taxes are placed in a trust fund dedicated to paying benefits owed to current and future beneficiaries.
When more taxes are collected than are needed to pay benefits, funds are converted to Treasury bonds — backed with the full faith and credit of the U.S. government — and are held in reserve for when revenue collected is not enough to pay the benefits due. We have just as much obligation to pay back those bonds with interest as we do to any other bondholders. The trust fund is the backbone of an important compact: that a lifetime of work will ensure dignity in retirement.
According to the most recent report of the independent Social Security Trustees, the trust fund is currently in surplus and growing. Even though Social Security began collecting less in taxes than it paid in benefits in 2010, the trust fund will continue to accrue interest and grow until 2025, and will have adequate resources to pay full benefits for the next 26 years.
For years, the surpluses in the Social Security trust fund have helped to mask our deficits elsewhere. Now that we are paying Social Security back, the problem is not with Social Security, but with the rest of the budget. In 2001 and 2003, Washington cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans and later expanded Medicare without paying for it. Blaming Social Security for our fiscal woes is like blaming you for not saving enough in your checking account because the bank lost all depositors’ money.
via Opposing view: Social Security isn’t the problem – USATODAY.com.
Filed under Politics, The Economy
Danville/Pittsylvania County, VA is included in this list.
I checked…
Emphasis/Italics are mine…
One in four counties in the U.S. are ”dying” – meaning, they are recording more deaths than births – according to findings by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Demographers call this phenomenon a “natural decrease.”
The data shows that 760 of the nation’s 3,142 counties are in this category – exacerbated, analysts say, by an aging population the mortgage crisis, record high unemployment in many states and the ever-fragile economy.
These counties exist in all parts of the country, from the old Rust Belt areas of Pennsylvania and Ohio, to rural East Texas and even in the wine country of northern California.
West Virginia is the first state to experience this “natural decrease” statewide over the last decade. Maine, Pennsylvania and Vermont may soon be next, the Census data suggested.
“Natural decrease is an important but not widely appreciated demographic phenomenon that is reshaping our communities in both rural and urban cores of large metro areas,” said Kenneth Johnson, a sociology professor and demographer at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute.
Such areas typically have aging white people who are not having children, as well as grim job prospects that drive younger adults away. These locales also tend to have few Hispanic immigrants, who, on the whole, are younger and have more children.
Indeed, the population of the entire U.S. grew by only 9.7 percent since 2000, the lowest such decade-rate since the Great Depression.
via One in four U.S. counties “dying”: Census Bureau – International Business Times.
Filed under Danville, Politics, The Economy, Virginia
This guy is right on it….
The Republicans are always trying to cut funding for early childhood development, Head Start and other proven effective programs, so I’m afraid as long as the GOP controls the House, there is little chance of anyone listening…
Plus, the GOP really doesn’t want educated voters with strong critical thinking skills. Then they could see the GOP is all smoke and mirrors…
From Jerome Kagan in the Christian Science Monitor.
Although schools play a major role in teaching children the basic skills required for jobs in an advanced economy, the family remains the primary institution that prepares children to take maximal advantage of formal schooling and motivates them to persist despite difficulty.
Parents are key to school preparation. A child’s academic training begins long before he or she sets foot in school. Studies show that more-educated parents instill patterns of thinking, processing information, and early reading instruction that form a vital foundation for later learning.
Sadly, children born to parents who have not graduated from high school are more likely to enter primary school less prepared for instruction and less motivated to learn these vital skills than those children growing up with college-educated parents. Yet most social scientists advising government on education reform do not emphasize the importance of changing the attitudes, behaviors, and opportunities for less-educated parents with low socioeconomic status.
The best predictor of reading and arithmetic skills in the early grades of school is the education of the parents. This relationship can have a major effect, because parents without much schooling are less likely to read to their children, to engage in reciprocal conversation and play, encourage improvement of their children’s intellectual talents, and promote in their children the belief that they can effectively alter their current conditions.
AND
These ethical considerations are inadequate excuses for failing to implement programs designed to help families caught in poverty – many of whom have lost faith in the national premise that all citizens are entitled to an equal opportunity for a satisfying life.
These programs can enhance the prospects of many children who otherwise might later require costly remediation programs that do not guarantee success because they intervene too late to offset the child’s already entrenched educational disadvantage and discouragement. Such later interventions rarely mute a family’s anger at a system that, by then, seems to be indifferent to their plight.
Programs that target early parental instruction don’t just change students’ lives, they have the potential to reform entire education systems.
via Want better students? Teach their parents. – Yahoo! News.
These are the questions I’m asking myself…
From the Washington Post:
In Washington, we’re getting closer and closer to a government shutdown. There’s now talk of a continuing resolution to push the deadline back by a couple of weeks, but Republicans will only accept it if it includes many of the cuts they’re asking for in their full spending bill. A shutdown isn’t a sure thing yet, but many who were dismissing the idea of it a month ago are taking it seriously today.
Republicans and Democrats, it seems, govern rather differently. Republicans are proving themselves willing to do what liberals long wanted the Obama administration to do: Play hardball. Refuse compromise. Risk severe consequences that they’ll attempt to blame on their opponent. The Obama administration’s answer to this was always that it was important to be seen as the reasonable actor in the drama, to occupy some space known as the middle, and to avoid, so much as possible, the appearance of dramatic overreach. This is as close as we’re likely to come to a test of that theory. In two cases, Republicans have chosen a hardline and are refusing significant compromise, even at the risk of terrible consequences. Will the public turn on them for overreach? Applaud their strength and conviction? Or not really care one way or the other, at least by the time the next election rolls around?
via Ezra Klein – Wonkbook: Are Republicans overreaching? Or just negotiating effectively?.
Filed under Politics, Tea Party, The Economy
I’m not really surprised by this, but still don’t get why this group primarily votes Republican.
Well, I have some theories…
My guess is this demographic was open to Obama and the Democrats, but was the first group to become disillusioned when the focus turned to Health Care, instead of Jobs, and no one was punished for the economic collapse.
These folks aren’t dumb. They know the Rich and the Corporations have bought the government.
The Democrats need to work harder to make their case to this group and not let the GOP control the narrative.
It would also help if they acted like real Democrats instead of Republican Lites and delivered for this group…
From the Washington Post:
The deep recession has had a profound effect on virtually every segment of the country’s population. But if there is an epicenter of financial stress and frustration, it is among whites without college degrees.
By many measures, this politically sensitive group has emerged from the recession with a particularly dark view of the economy and the financial future. Whites without college degrees also are the most apt to blame Washington for the problems, and are exceedingly harsh in their judgment of the Obama administration and its economic policies.
These findings come from a new national survey conducted by The Washington Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University. The numbers represent a fresh look at the effects of the long recession on all Americans, but particularly “non-college whites,” a group of long-fought-over voters often considered a bellwether of the political ramifications of economic woes.
A mere 10 percent of whites without college degrees say they are satisfied with the nation’s current economic situation. Most – 56 percent – say the country’s best days are in the past, and more, 61 percent, say it will be a long time before the economy begins to recover.
Fully 43 percent of non-college whites say “hard work and determination are no guarantees of success,” and nearly half doubt that they have enough education and skills to compete in the job market.
Not everything is bleak in this group’s outlook, according to the survey. Nearly seven in 10 say they are mostly optimistic about their future, although that is somewhat lower than for whites with college degrees, and for most other groups in the population. More than six in 10 report feeling at least somewhat secure financially.
The survey also found differences in the outlooks of younger and older whites without college degrees. Those younger than 50 were more optimistic about the future than were those older than 50 and were somewhat less pessimistic about how long it will take the economy to recover.
via Poll: Whites without college degrees especially pessimistic about economy.
Filed under Politics, Tea Party, The Economy
Interesting thoughts from Sharon Salzberg…
“We all want to be happy. We need to expand the notion of what that means, to make it bigger and wiser,” the author said in a telephone interview from Albuquerque, a stop on her book tour. On Feb. 26, Salzberg will lead a three-hour retreat at Santa Monica’s First United Methodist Church for the InsightLA meditation center.
She said a key to experiencing happiness on an ongoing basis is to acknowledge pain and suffering, something American culture resists.
“It’s difficult to admit to ourselves that we suffer. We feel humiliated, like we should have been able to control our pain. If someone else is suffering, we like to tuck them away, out of sight,” Salzberg said. “It’s a cruel, cruel conditioning. There is no controlling the unfolding of life.”
via Beliefs: Through meditation, she makes happiness an inside job – latimes.com.
Filed under Yoga
Great- and unfortunately very accurate- editorial from The Washington Post:
Thanks to the Tea Party, we are now told that all our problems will be solved by cutting government programs. Thus the House Republicans’ budget bill passed Saturday. They foresee nirvana if we simply reduce our spending on Head Start, Pell grants for college access, teen pregnancy prevention, clean-water programs, K-12 education and a host of other areas.
Does anyone really think that cutting such programs will create jobs or help Americans get ahead? But give the Tea Party guys credit: They have seized the political and media agenda and made budget cutting as fashionable as Justin Bieber was five minutes ago.
More striking is the Tea Party’s influence on Washington’s political elite, which looks down at the more extreme men and women of the right when they appear on Fox News but ends up carrying their water.
Lori Montgomery reported in The Post last week that a bipartisan group of senators thinks a sensible deficit reduction package would involve lifting the Social Security retirement age to 69 and reforming taxes, purportedly to raise revenue, in a way that would cut the top income tax rate for the wealthy from 35 percent to 29 percent.
Only a body dominated by millionaires could define “shared sacrifice” as telling nurses’ aides and coal miners they have to work until age 69 while sharply cutting tax rates on wealthy people. I see why conservative Republicans like this. I honestly don’t get why Democrats – “the party of the people,” I’ve heard – would come near such an idea.
Filed under Politics, Tea Party, The Economy
Another article from Alternet worth reading…
No one is looking at the underlying philosophical struggle– and that’s what is really going on. This is a battle between two different world views:
In the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama accurately described the basis of American democracy: Empathy – citizens caring for each other, both social and personal responsibility-acting on that care, and an ethic of excellence. From these, our freedoms and our way of life follow, as does the role of government: to protect and empower everyone equally. Protection includes safety, health, the environment, pensions and empowerment starts with education and infrastructure. No one can be free without these, and without a commitment to care and act on that care by one’s fellow citizens.
The conservative worldview rejects all of that.
Conservatives believe in individual responsibility alone, not social responsibility. They don’t think government should help its citizens. That is, they don’t think citizens should help each other. The part of government they want to cut is not the military (we have 174 bases around the world), not government subsidies to corporations, not the aspect of government that fits their worldview. They want to cut the part that helps people. Why? Because that violates individual responsibility.
Filed under Politics, The Economy
This one is worth reading in it’s entirety…
From Alternet:
Since the second world war, corporations have shifted much of the federal tax burden from themselves to the public – and especially onto the middle-income members of the public. No wonder a tax “revolt” developed, yet it did not push to stop or reverse that shift. Corporations had focused public anger elsewhere, against government expenditures as “wasteful” and against public employees as inefficient.
Organisations such as Chambers of Commerce and corporations’ academic and political allies together shaped the public debate. They did not want it to be about who does and does not pay the taxes. Instead, they steered the “tax revolt” against taxes in general (on businesses and individuals alike). The corporations’ efforts saved them far more in reduced taxes than the costs of their political contributions, lobbyists’ fees and public relations campaigns.
At the same time, corporations also lobbied successfully for many loopholes in the tax laws. The official federal tax rate on profits is now around 35% for large corporations, which theoretically have to pay additional state taxes on their profits and local taxes on their property (land, buildings, business inventories, etc). Those official and theoretical tax obligations have been used to support conservatives’ claims that corporations pay half or more of their profits to federal, state and local levels of government combined. However, because of loopholes, the truth is very different. The actual tax payments of corporations, and especially large corporations, are far lower than their official, theoretical obligations.
Filed under Politics, The Economy
Lost in the 21st Century 