Central Falls, Rhode Island, one of a handful of U.S. cities and counties facing fiscal collapse in the wake of the economic recession, filed for a rare Chapter 9 bankruptcy on Monday.


The bankruptcy filing, a risky and potentially expensive move that could freeze the city out of the U.S. municipal bond market, marks a symbolic blow as state and local governments struggle to pull themselves out of the recession.

The smallest city in the smallest U.S. state made the filing as it grappled with an $80 million unfunded pension and retiree health benefit liability that is nearly quadruple its annual budget of $17 million.


"This is a wake-up call for other struggling towns," said Eileen Norcross, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. "States should be looking at Rhode Island and saying, 'How can we avoid this?"


Still, dire predictions of mass municipal defaults made late last year by Wall Street analyst Meredith Whitney have not come to pass. A string of failures could rattle the $2.9 trillion U.S. municipal debt market

RED STATES AND BLUE STATES

During the Obama campaign, one of his oft spoken themes was " We are not red states and blue states , we are the United States."
Well ! I think this debt crisis showed us all that we are blue states are red states and not the United States. And one of the big problems Obama has failed to recognize since taking office is exactly that.
The people who do not agree with Obama are not willing to work together, they are "take it to the edge and over." The fact that these tea party people were willing to push the American economy over the cliff, and cost the average American thousands of dollars, is proof that nothing matters except their agenda.
Obama wake up these are not work together people, they are "their way or the highway" people, look at Health Care, did they come around and work together or did they just obstruct.
Obama stop being naive, this is not a community organizer (bring community together) job.
This is about power Washington power, and you better learn quick these people are out to destroy you.
Before you all comment, let's be clear, there is nothing wrong with having principals and not compromising them, but you were elected to get things done for the American people and that alone means not getting your way all the time, and raising the debt limit is a Washington pastime done year after year. Anything else is politics pure and simple.

Romney if I can trust he will do what he says and if I am confident the country will vote for an LDS.  (I would, but "O" must be defeated).

Pawlenty, if he can get any traction, I like what he says but so far it is one hand clapping.

Perry if he enters, he is a strong Conservative with an incredible record.  Secession, succmession.

Bachman if she can make her strength and talent look electable.

Not Palin, not because she is not qualified and not an incredible person, it is not her time and she is more effective as a unapologetic spokesperson. 

Not Huntsman.  I ask why is he even running, we don't need compromise, we need better government.  Moderation got whacked last time as it does every time.

At what point do they admit they were wrong?

Eric too busy figuring out Tom Waits seems vaporous.  Baxter and Terry trying to put everyone who is successful into the "lucky sperm club".  But they may represent the best of L/P/S thinking.

The Tea Party?  They are holding to their word, as promised to their electorate, to not waste any more money.  That is all.  We are heading towards a horrible outcome regarding our debt and the L/P/S act like nothing is wrong.  At least they did, until the Tea Party activists held everyone's feet to the fire.  Even Crazy Rich recently wrote, "cut spending, raise taxes".  The Tea Party, (and Jim G) don't believe any spending will be cut if taxes are raised, so we want the spending cuts first.  Yes! We shout, we know it will be hard.  Yes, we shout, we think (and hope) that most Americans will understand that their is no free lunch.  Terry, you recent (nice in terms of describing the hard work of your father) but incredibly stupid post really says it all...which is denial.

You wasted our money on a ridiculous stimulus (ridiculous in that the issue was not deflation rather the nearness to insolvency, the over commitments to entitlements, now including health care).

You did this to us leaving the depression, you tried to do this to us in the 60's and you used the (ginned) up anger against the war to do it again.

You are again trying to destroy our country.  No Eric?  Listen to Pelosi, the Republicans are trying to balance the budget on the back of our seniors!  Really?  Remember "draconian cuts" describing proposals to limit the GROWTH of spending?  That crap isn't funny anymore, it has lead to our near economic destruction.  It was never the tax collections, it has always been spending and the relentless growth of government.

So, you have left us kinda screwed.  We are out of money, we are losing our economic position, the successful REMAIN SITTING ON THEIR HANDS IN FEAR AND ANGER, and you protest (with disdain) a movements desire for our government to live within our means. 

And Baxter, the recession presented your guy with an opportunity, others understood, he blew it.

WE SHOULD BE OUT OF THIS MESS BY NOW!

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The GDP revisions—done every year by the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis—also show that the recession was deeper than first thought. Output fell 8.9% in the fourth quarter of 2008, and 6.7% in the first quarter of 2009. This means the Obama Administration had to climb out of a deeper hole, but paradoxically it also means that the recovery should be far more rapid.

The historical pattern is that the deeper the recession, the more robust the recovery. This is precisely what happened after the deep 1982 recession, as the nearby table shows. Growth was 4.5% in 1983, 7.2% in 1984, and it averaged nearly 4% for the five years after that through 1989. That is what a healthy recovery is supposed to look like, which is in marked contrast to the anemic eight quarters of this recovery.

This tale of two recoveries is an object lesson in economic policy. Taking office in 2009, President Obama embarked on one of the greatest reflation bets in history. He deployed the entire arsenal of neo-Keynesian policies to lift domestic demand, much as former White House economist Larry Summers still instructs at Harvard and most of the media still recommend.

So Congress deployed nearly a $1 trillion in stimulus, plus a battalion of temporary and targeted programs: cash for clunkers, cash for caulkers, tax credits for home buyers, 99 weeks of jobless benefits, "clean energy" grants, subsidies to states, and so much more. We were told that every $1 of this spending would conjure $1.50 in new economic output. The Federal Reserve has also more than cooperated by keeping interest rates near-zero for 31 months.

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So how is that hope and change working for everybody!

Three years ago, Max Eden made phone calls and spent weekends in New Hampshireworking for Barak Obama's presidential campaign.

Today, the 22-year-old recent graduate of Yale University says Obama "very, very gradually lost me." Eden is co-founder of a national group called Students for Solvency, which advocates for a sustainable national budget. Eden now supports former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman,  a Republican, for president next year, and is living in Cleveland with his mother and looking for a job.

"I was attracted to the same thing everyone else was attracted to," Eden said of Obama. "I wasn't sure what he would do, but I believed in that hope and change."

Now, he said, "we're graduating college, facing our own debt, and having trouble finding jobs."

Still W's fault?

The U.S. economy expanded at a slower pace than expected in the spring as consumers cut back on spending, while revisions showed the slowdown since the beginning of the year was much more drastic than previously thought.


The Commerce Department Friday said gross domestic product rose at an annualized seasonally adjusted rate of 1.3% in April through June, while first-quarter growth was revised down sharply to a 0.4% rate from the earlier estimate of a 1.9% gain. A big reason behind the downward revision in first-quarter growth was that the inventory buildup by companies was less than initially estimated, while outlays by the federal government and consumers were also revised down.

Boehner Never Had the Votes

The President, Vice President, Pelosi, Reid and McConnell have all been wasting their time. Boehner could not deliver the House Republicans. As Obama said, there is nothing to which the GOP can say "yes". In a time of divided government, this is a problem.

Time for Boehner and Pelosi to get together with Reid and McConnell. A $4 trillion grand bargain just got a boost tonight. Boehner can't deliver the House GOP, but he can cobble together a majority with Pelosi. The Senate would quickly pass such a compromise bill.

Keep your fingers crossed.

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, "the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”




-- Senator Barack H. Obama, March 2006

Deficit Ceiling Game Plan Six Days Out

It appears that Boehner has the votes to get his bill passed in the House. Reid needs to then introduce his bill in the Senate. Word has it that McConnell has promised to Filibuster the bill. I suggest that Reid require McConnell & Co to physically maintain the Filibuster on the Senate floor, as allowed under the rules. We will then have the clock ticking on the deficit ceiling as the GOP visibly prevents the body from acting.

It is my preference that Reid introduce the Conrad bill that reduces the deficit $4 trillion over ten years, half through spending cuts and half through tax hikes on the rich. Contrary to the prevailing view, I think that such a vote will strengthen the position of Senate Democrats facing reelection next year.

Then - after Senate GOP caves in the bright lights - lets send Reid's bill and Boehner's bill to an ad hoc "conference". The stage will be set for a bill reducing the deficit $4T in the coming decade, 75% obtained through spending cuts. It will ultimately require Democratic support in the House, along with the GOP establishment, as the Tea Party is marginalized by the adults in the room. Our Triple A bond rating will be maintained.

Meanwhile, Obama needs to announce that we will meet our interest obligations until a deal is done, but everything else will be paid $.50 on the dollar. The pressure will come in handy.

THE STATE OF ARIZONA ACCORDING TO KYLE AND McCAIN

Can anyone help me out here? How can two Republican Senators who support the traditional marriage between a man and a woman, have in their state Colorado City with outright polygamy.

Warren Jeffs moves to Texas and within a year is arrested. But practiced it here for years


The school system get 4 million from state and federal funds, and no investigations, no outrage from Kyle or McCain?
It is baffling to say the least! I am not suggesting they are complicit but they did NOTHING FOR YEARS, and Texas cleaned it up in a year.
If anyone know's an answers please help out!

THE CARLSON FAMILY PLAN REVENUE AND CUTS

My father Vincent faced a real problem with four children growing up in Elgin, Illinois. He wanted us to go to Catholic schools. The free public schools was not an option with my father. So we had a family meeting, it seems we did that a lot in our family.
It was decided that our family vacation to Wisconsin was not needed and that money would go to pay tuition. When college( big expense) was brought up years later, cuts were not needed but income and cuts were needed, so Dad took a second job, working at the race tracks at night as a cashier, three night a week to pay for college for his kids. VERY SIMPLE cuts were not enough to help.
Any one who thinks this idea of cutting tax loopholes ( tax cuts given at a certain time for a certain reason) is really a Tax increase is just spinning words. Here is what the American people think is a tax increase raising the tax rate on people or corporations.

We were always in debt, car payments, mortgage, school loans, so debt was needed to survive, so this idea of a balanced budget every year is just stupid because American families don't have balanced budgets every year.
Balanced budgets are talked about every year by the party who is not in office and so one year it's a Republican idea next term it's a Democrat idea.
This idea of having this crises in the next six months right before an election really who is playing politics is not hard to answer it's the Republicans

Although histrionically impatient with Republicans' refusal to accept certain measures, Obama insists he will "not accept" a debt-ceiling deal that does not increase income taxes. Surely this is the meaning of his July 11 words: "I do not want, and will not accept, a deal in which ... I'm able to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income that I don't need."


To understand Republican distrust of him, consider, from the many examples of his paltering with the truth, his July 15 news conference, wherein he veered from the subject of the debt ceiling to say "I've got three trade deals ready to go" yet they are "being held up because some folks don't want to provide Trade Adjustment Assistance to people who may be displaced as a consequence of trade." The facts are:

TAA, which has existed since 1962, enjoys bipartisan support. The 2009 stimulus increased it, supposedly temporarily, and it did revert to pre-stimulus levels in February. Now, however, Democrats suddenly insist that TAA's stimulus levels be made permanent.

Obama's wee mendacity about TAA illustrates the large stakes of the debt debate, which is a proxy for an epochal argument about the nature of American governance. Obama's money gusher has driven federal spending from under 20% of GDP to almost 25%. Democrats consider this the new normal — until it becomes the base from which they launch their next surge of statism.

Will must be smart, he writes like me.  The last sentence says it all.

If you've worked in the Bush administration, sooner or later the question comes: How smart is he?  Sometimes the question is snarky. Sometimes it's sincere. Always it comes freighted with presumption.

The short answer is: Yes, of course, President Bush is smart. Even by the credentials that most impress these days, he's got the same Ivy pedigree as his successor. (I would bet on better grades too, but we don't know because President Obama won't release his college records.) Still, the better answer is a completely different question: Is he a man of courage?  That's an old-fashioned word, courage.

In my own career, I have known many smart people: those with Nobel Prizes, who teach at the world's leading universities or run the world's most dynamic businesses—in short, people with intellectual firepower that would light up the sky. In my life I have also found what I suspect most Americans have found in theirs: The ones you come to respect are those you know will stand up when you need them.

As a White House speechwriter, I learned much about the battlefield version of courage from our Medal of Honor ceremonies. One was Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham. When an Iraqi insurgent rolled out a grenade during a search of his car, Cpl. Dunham did not hesitate. He jumped on that grenade, using his helmet and body to absorb the blast. He gave his life—and two of his brother Marines are alive today because of it.

I saw another version of courage in President Bush. My time in the White House coincided with the worst times of the Iraq War. Each day seemed to bring news of good Americans dying for no appreciable gain, of Baghdad descending into hell, of some congressman or senator who had supported the effort in easier times now calling for America to cut and run.

More than once President Bush told me, "We are not going to lose our nerve and abandon the people of Iraq the way we did the people of Vietnam, from an embassy rooftop." It made for a lonely presidency. Rather than accept defeat, he ordered a surge that almost no one—including some around him—wanted: not the Pentagon, not a weary American public, certainly not Republicans or Democrats in Congress.

The night he gave that speech, Jan. 10, 2007, did not go well. The network gummed up the news feed. The president looked stiff and uncomfortable. Scarcely before he'd finished, the glib and gifted were on television declaring it a flop. The president expected as much. He did what he had to do anyway.

So successful was the surge that today we take it for granted. The progress we see in Iraq, and even the progress President Obama has made in Afghanistan, would not have been possible but for that surge. That surge would not have happened but for President Bush's will.

It's illuminating to look back at where the "smart set" was at the time. They were the folks on the Iraq Study Group, essentially calling for a dignified retreat. They were the people declaring Iraq an "unwinnable civil war." Alas, some conservatives also let their feelings of superior smarts get the best of them. Even today they've blinded themselves to an extraordinary feat of history: how a president with low public approval ratings but high integrity turned what looked to be another American humiliation into a victory for freedom.

I cannot forget. So when I look out at the Republicans vying for the 2012 nomination, I am looking for more than a candidate who shares my policy preferences. I want to know whether that someone is a stand-up man or woman. In today's media environment, that also means someone willing to be thought stupid by a class of people who think the crease in a man's trousers tells you something about presidential ability.

Many years ago in his autobiography "Out of Step," the philosopher and Cold Warrior Sidney Hook related how the 1960s surrender to student radicals by university administrators and faculty—people who knew better—led him to revise his belief that "intelligence was the supreme virtue." His mistake, he wrote, had been to take "for granted the operation of moral courage."

The American people do not have that luxury. For when it comes to the toughest decisions, the man or woman sitting in the Oval Office will likely find the facts incomplete and some of the smarter people on staff retreating into the tall grass of on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand recommendations. In these moments, freedom's place in a dangerous world hangs on the character and instinct of the president.

So let others fret about George W. Bush's smarts. For my nation's sake, I'm hoping our next president has some of his steel.

Worst Congress Ever

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/07/19/worst_congress_ever

Dear L/P/S:

Before you read the post below (an important one), please ponder the following from MA.  Please note the sponsoring party, the state (mostly L/P/S).  Just for once open your eyes as to the damage of your mindset.

Or perhaps you agree and Dear Reader, when greater than 50% do, we are done.

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The notion that paid sick time is a “basic right” of private-sector workers is being drummed into taxpayers’ heads by policy-makers, few of whom — if any — have ever struggled to make a payroll or to keep a business afloat in economic times like these. Well, in any economy really, but that’s another editorial.


The issue resurfaced last week during the annual hearing at the State House on legislation that would require Massachusetts employers large and small to guarantee paid sick time to their employees. A similar effort, backed by Sen. John F. Kerry, is pending on Capitol Hill.

That the legislation has yet to become law may be explained by the fact that the majority of employers already offer paid sick time to full-time workers, and to this point a sufficient number of lawmakers have recognized that imposing another government mandate on businesses when you’re trying to prod them to start hiring again is nonsensical.


But that is insufficient to satisfy those who believe government should determine what employee benefits a private company must offer. That includes many Democratic lawmakers on Beacon Hill and Gov. Deval Patrick’s top labor adviser, Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development Joanne Goldstein, who before taking the post worked as a union lawyer. It also includes the cities of San Francisco (naturally) and Washington, D.C. and the state of Connecticut — the first state in the nation to mandate paid sick leave.


Talk to people who have run businesses, though, as the Associated Industries of Massachusetts and other Bay State business groups have, and you’ll find folks eager to offer the most generous benefits possible — including paid time off for employees who get sick — but not always able to afford them.


Meanwhile employers won’t suddenly find the resources in the couch cushions to fund this new employee benefit. Man-dating paid sick leave is sure to hold down salaries and cut into other job perks. And just like raising taxes when the national unemployment rate is at 9.2 percent, imposing a costly new mandate on employers, no matter how well-intentioned, is a job-killer.