| February 16th, 2011, Denis Blesford  The recent confrontation between the Republicans and the Democrats over the federal budget seems to have intensified with its release. Disregarding President Obama’s calls for large cuts in spending, House Republicans criticized the federal budget and said that it will lead to a significant increase in the federal deficit. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said that President Obama’s budget did not take cognizance of the extreme fiscal problems facing the country today. He also criticized the government’s decision of raising income taxes to balance government spending. → Read More February 15th, 2011, Michael Danielson  Of all of the potential solutions going around today regarding the economy, the unemployment rate, and the Tier 5 unemployment extension in particular, most of them can be grouped into three categories: cut spending, raise spending, and cut taxes. It’s interesting to note that no one — absolutely no one — is talking about the obvious fourth option: raising taxes. The reason is that, since Reagan took office and convinced everyone through his movie-star magic that lowering the tax rate would cause economic growth (they don’t — and , everyone is walking on eggshells around the idea of raising taxes because they’ve all grown up with the belief that raising taxes will cause economic hell. → Read More February 14th, 2011, Denis Blesford  Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are planning massive cuts to President Barack Obama’s 2012 budget proposal, Reuters reported. Rep. Hal Rogers, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said his fellow Republicans agreed to pursue further cuts in federal spending in next year’s budget. The aim is to trim almost $58 billion from current budget levels, the Reuters report said Rogers told Reuters he had instructed committee members to include the proposed deeper cuts, and that “we are continuing to work to complete this critical legislation.” → Read More February 14th, 2011, Michael Danielson  Representative Barbara Lee (D, CA) is continuing to push her alternative to the Tier 5 unemployment extension, House Bill 589, the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act. The Act would add 14 retroactive weeks onto the first Tier of the EUC, giving just over 3 additional months of unemployment benefits to every person — 99ers included — that has been unemployed for over 26 weeks. The House Ways And Means Subcommittee on Human Resources held a meeting on Thursday to “improve efforts to help unemployed Americans find jobs.” In response to the announcement of that meeting by Representative Geoff Davis (R, KY) — the Subcommittee Chairman — Rep. Lee made this statement: → Read More February 11th, 2011, Michael Danielson  The Tier 5 unemployment extension may not look like it’s all that necessary anymore, what with unemployment apparently plummeting — from 9.8% to 9.4% to 9.0% in the past three months. Why, at this rate, it’ll be only a year and we’ll have an unemployment rate of 5.2% and we’ll be back on business! Of course, everyone knows that it’s not going to happen, and there’s been quite a bit of talk about the shenanigans that have led us to the lowballed unemployment rate of 9.0% The best visual about the truth behind the numbers comes, as often, from Clusterstock’s Chart of the Day. → Read More February 10th, 2011, Michael Danielson  The Tier 5 unemployment extension fight is not going to see any progress in the near future; the Representatives supporting it have doomed it to fail before it ever sees the light of day. HR 6556, the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Expansion Act, is already dead in the water. There are a few rules about news writing that are universal; one of them is to never write a sentence that is in the first person. But this has me so incredibly livid that I’m breaking that sacrosanct rule to say this: I am appalled — I am appalled, because they should know better. → Read More February 9th, 2011, Michael Danielson  The philosophical opposition to the Tier 5 unemployment extension has always been the fiscal conservatives and their belief that cutting taxes and cutting spending will cause economic growth. But long before the Republicans gained control of the House and started winning huge concessions from the (still at least theoretically liberal) President, another large Western first-world society decided to go the route of cutting taxes and spending — the United Kingdom. Last October, the UK launched what was referred to as an ‘austerity program’, and the US Republican Party has often cited that program as a prime example of what the United States should be doing in response to the lingering effects of the Great Recession. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat Party of Great Britain had engaged in massive spending cuts, and sold the program to their citizens by essentially saying “if you all suffer in the short term, we will all recover in the long term. → Read More February 8th, 2011, Michael Danielson  NREUI — the Nationwide Rally to Extend Unemployment Insurance — is seeking names and locations in an attempt to set up a massive, coordinated, peaceful demonstration to encourage Congress to enact a Tier 5 unemployment extension. The rally hopes to see at least 25 people at each of at least 50 unemployment offices across the country. They currently have less than two hundred names; if you know a 99er, send them a link! It’s sad that, in a country where thousands of people will rally in New York, Atlanta, and San Francisco to support the citizens of Egypt, no such rallies are in progress objecting to the abuse of Americans by our own government. And yes, when you’ve been stripped of your income, your personal standing, and your dignity by filthy Wall Street shenanigans and then the government dedicated to looking out for the People turns its back on you, that’s abuse. → Read More | Listen to Mike Colliss Interviews |
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