Next budget-slicing hostage drama only seven weeks away
Get ready for spending cuts beyond the debt ceiling agreement. That deal only calls for spending caps, not spending floors. The regular appropriations process must be completed by Oct. 1, or else government operations shut down. The GOP will insist that those bills impose additional cuts. Any Democratic assertion of resistance will have no credibility in face of documented pattern of surrender. Oops. Turns out that costs and benefits of giving in to debt-ceiling hostage-taking were hopelessly miscalculated.
Two profoundly un-ambitious budget plans
You can’t go five minutes without reading press accounts that characterize the Obama-Boehner budgetary prescription — now’s the time to start on $4 trillion in debt reduction — as “ambitious.” Is there anything less ambitious than plans to guarantee that our children and our grandchildren will live less well than we do?
Gov. Cuomo’s faux victory on behalf of NYC renters
Cuomo left the trigger points at which apartments are deregulated worse for tenants than they were 14 years ago, when then-Governor George Pataki first orchestrated legislative changes designed to destroy rent regulation.
As AARP embraces social security cuts, its pattern of misleading rhetoric comes into focus
However much money AARP spends, and however many town hall meetings it holds, its rationalizations for shifting position just won’t stand scrutiny. AARP isn't hopping aboard a ship that was already sailing, but rather choosing to provide critical momentum and cover to resuscitate the benefits-cutting effort.
Caught in the act
Today’s robbing of the NYC employees’ health insurance fund as a “realistic” means to pay to avoid layoffs will become tomorrow’s hysterically anti-union “health benefits costs are out of control” rallying cry. City officials — neither the “education” mayor, nor the backbone-free City Council — are just not prepared to pay for vital services.
As AARP embraces social security cuts, its pattern of misleading rhetoric comes into focus
However much money AARP spends, and however many town hall meetings it holds, its rationalizations for shifting position just won’t stand scrutiny. AARP isn't hopping aboard a ship that was already sailing, but rather choosing to provide critical momentum and cover to resuscitate the benefits-cutting effort.
Caught in the act
Today’s robbing of the NYC employees’ health insurance fund as a “realistic” means to pay to avoid layoffs will become tomorrow’s hysterically anti-union “health benefits costs are out of control” rallying cry.
Foreclosure relief programs didn't have to be "just voluntary"
Faced with evidence of the ineffectiveness of its foreclosure prevention efforts, the Administration shrugs its shoulders and says it has "limited levers." The limitations are not a necessary fact of life, but a function of the view that forcing financial institutions to modify mortgages would be an affront to the dignity and sovereignty of banks.
NYT: two stories, false equivalence
A majority of Senators supports a bill to end tax breaks for oil and gas companies and opposes a bill that would expand the areas open to oil and gas exploration. Is the presence or absence of majority support really irrelevant to the reporting of the stories? A continuation of our ongoing feature on limitations of the paper's reporting (the feature also includes examples of reporter opinions and assumptions getting tucked in to national political stories as though they were facts).
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