Achievements of This President and His Administration

He and they should be so proud.

More Screaming Hypocrisy From the "Small Government" Republicans

Republicans always scream about how they want "small government!" and lower government spending and less debt and deficit.

Sure they are.

But guess what states get the most money from Uncle Sugar.

Republican States Are More Dependent On Government

It's all based on this study:

2015's States Most & Least Dependent on the Federal Government

Seems the "red" states suck up most of the Federal dollar, hands down.  Or hands out, anyway:

And Kansas is number 5, out of 50, of course, for taking the most Federal money:

Rank(1 = least dependent)	State Name	Return on Taxpayer Investment(Category Rank)	Federal Funding as % of State Revenue(Category Rank)	Federal Employees Per Capita(Category Rank)	Number of Civilian Non-Defense Federal Employees per Capita(Category Rank)
1	New Jersey	$0.48 (4)	26.87% (10)	0.00382 (5)	0.00178 (2)
2	Delaware	$0.31 (1)	25.61% (7)	0.00768 (17)	0.00194 (3)
3	Illinois	$0.45 (3)	26.41% (8)	0.00550 (14)	0.00272 (11)
4	Minnesota	$0.54 (7)	26.88% (11)	0.00353 (4)	0.00295 (16)
5	Kansas	$0.54 (6)	25.22% (6)	0.01460 (37)	0.00342 (25)

It's bad enough they want to take money in the form of tax breaks and unemployment payments, etc., etc., away from the middle-, lower- and working-classes, that's bad.

On top of that, they have to keep working to give more and more money in the form of tax credits and deductions to the already-wealthy and corporations. 

Sure, that's all horrible and wicked and devious enough.

But to, on top of all that ugliness, scream and cry and complain about government spending and debt and deficit and then be the ones that suck up the most money, overall, out of all of us?

It would be funny if it weren't insulting.

And even immoral.

Adding even more irony--and hypocrisy--they're also the "Christians" of the bunch, too. Or say they insist.

It's painful.  Just painful.

Quote of the day--on the national deficit

So, why, exactly, can't we have a jobs bill for Americans, especially so we can repair our infrastructure?

Seriously.

Link to original article--get it all here:  What People (Don't) Know About The Deficit

On taxes and fairness

"'Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver,' he demands, 'or less?' The year was 1985. The president was Ronald Wilson Reagan." --Tim Dickinson writing in Rolling Stone Magazine Link: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-gop-became-the-party-of-the-rich-20111109#ixzz1dudveKcZ

Heads up, folks: $61B is pocket change at the Pentagon

Okay, so the Republicans are threatening to "shut down the government" again, this Friday, by not compromising with anyone else in Washington.

These guys just don't learn.

They did it before, in 1995, and took a beating for it but no, no, here they go again, threatening us all.

President Obama is playing this one smart, unlike other negotiations with them like health care.  He's pointing out that the military wouldn't get their pay and other necessities.

Shrewd move.

But seriously, if anyone really wanted 61 billion dollars out of our spending, for the love of pete, just take it out of defense spending.

On the real, hard budget books alone, we spend some $711 billion dollars a year on defense.

As I've said before, it's insane.

And that's just what's on the books.  What's not shown goes far beyond a trillion dollars.  They've got so much money, time and again we find they've lost a few billion here and unaccounted for a few billion more over there.

So for pity's sake, Republicans, if you want this precious $61 billion slashed from our spending, take it from the Pentagon.

It's just sitting there at the Pentagon, it's small potatoes for them and they won't even miss it.

Links:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_government_shutdown;_ylt=Ao5x4JZDlsOMBZD.nZWKp8tH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTNhdW1tdXBjBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwNDA2L3VzX2dvdmVybm1lbnRfc2h1dGRvd24EY2NvZGUDbXBfZWNfOF8xMARjcG9zAzIEcG9zAzIEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawN3aGl0ZWhvdXNlc2E-
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_government_shutdown;_ylt=Ao5x4JZDlsOMBZD.nZWKp8tH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTNhdW1tdXBjBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwNDA2L3VzX2dvdmVybm1lbnRfc2h1dGRvd24EY2NvZGUDbXBfZWNfOF8xMARjcG9zAzIEcG9zAzIEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawN3aGl0ZWhvdXNlc2E-

Is this the only way we can legislate now?

Dum-dum legislation seems to be the only thing the Obama Administration can come up with right now.

First, it's been "leaked out" from the White House that the President is going to recommend we freeze Federal spending for the next 3 years, in an effort to keep deficits and spending down.

This seems pretty easy to pass and sure to please the opposing Party, if only because it's throwing them an economic "bone", so to speak.

The American people have been shown in polls to be against these big deficits we're running up so this is what what they came up with.

Whatever.

There are people chiming in on it, for and against. Some say it will help keep deficits down. Others say we shouldn't try to keep spending down too much, since we're in a deep recession.

We'll find out who's right, soon enough.

The other easy government we were given came yesterday when the President and White House got a law to make texting for commercial vehicles illegal.

Talk about an easy one.

Who could be against this?

We're in 2 wars and the worst recession in 80 years and this is the legislation we get from our government.

I'm still a supporter of this President, to be sure, but I hope we're doing what we can be doing on all the right things.

It feels like Nero is fiddling sometimes, to me.

What we should--and shouldn't--do

Yesterday I wrote that the United States should outlaw hedge funds, short selling and other tricks on Wall Street.

I think this fits with the many people who also think that throwing billions and trillions of taxpayer, government money--that we have to borrow, mind you--is a bad idea.

Google Mish Sedlock, for one and Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist as two of them.

Fiscally conservative Republicans and some Democrats, alike, are thinking too much is too much, period.

Mr. Krugman's article in The New York Times puts this very cooly and logically into perspective today. You shouldn't miss it.

Link to the column here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/opinion/27krugman.html?th&emc=th