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Latest Articles: United States News
No Vote Tonight in House on Boehner Budget Plan
Post Date: 2011-07-28 22:33:07 by go65
2 Comments
Per the House Whip Kevin McCarthy there will be no vote tonigh. Boehner lacks the votes.
California Wages War On Single-Family Homes
Post Date: 2011-07-28 17:14:13 by CZ82
1 Comments
California Wages War On Single-Family Homes By JOEL KOTKIN In recent years, homeowners have been made to feel a bit like villains rather than the victims of hard times, Wall Street shenanigans and inept regulators. Instead of being praised for braving the elements, suburban homeowners have been made to feel responsible for everything from the Great Recession to obesity to global warming. In California, the assault on the house has gained official sanction. Once the heartland of the American dream, the Golden State has begun implementing new planning laws designed to combat global warming. These draconian measures could lead to a ban on the construction of private residences, ...
Boehner: 'We don't have the votes, but we're getting there'
Post Date: 2011-07-28 12:20:57 by go65
4 Comments
ouse Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told Republican lawmakers Thursday he does not yet have the votes to pass his debt-limit bill. Though members emerged from a closed-door meeting saying they believe the Speaker will secure the 217 he needs by Thursday evening, when the House is set to vote, Boehner will still need to convince dozens of undecided members to back his measure. “We don’t have the votes, but we’re getting there,” Boehner said in the meeting, according to Rep. Peter King (N.Y.) and other Republicans in the room. King said Boehner was “very low-key” a day after he rallied his troops with the exhortation, “Get your ass in line.” Click for ...
Gov. Christie Is Taken To Hospital After Having Difficulty Breathing
Post Date: 2011-07-28 12:17:47 by Brian S
4 Comments
SOMERVILLE — Gov. Chris Christie was hospitalized this morning after he complained of having trouble breathing, according to the governor's office. A spokesman, Michael Drewniak, said Christie suffers from asthma, and was taken to Somerset Medical Center in Somerville "out of an abundance of caution." Drewniak said the governor was "doing fine: and undergoing tests. At town hall events, Christie often tells audiences that he has asthma. When explaining the difference between the federal government's health care plans and New Jersey's, he describes going to his local pharmacist to refill his inhaler prescription. Christie had been scheduled to attend a ...
Treasuries Join Stocks Dropping in Markets Overwhelmed by U.S. Debt Debate [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2011-07-28 08:24:19 by go65
56 Comments
Stocks and Treasuries are moving in tandem twice as often as they normally do, a sign investors are growing convinced the U.S. will lose its AAA credit rating and that an impasse among lawmakers may spur losses in both markets. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has risen or fallen together with 10-year Treasury notes 80 percent of the time in the last 10 days, compared with the average since 2000 of 41 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The benchmark index for American shares lost 2 percent yesterday, the most since June 1, and the 10-year bond fell, driving its yield up three basis points to 2.98 percent. Equities and government bonds are reversing their historical ...
Gay couple asked to reverse shirt at Dollywood
Post Date: 2011-07-28 07:10:17 by A K A Stone
10 Comments
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A lesbian couple is asking for changes at Dollywood after an employee asked one of the women to turn her T-shirt reading "marriage is so gay" inside-out to avoid offending others on a recent visit to the Tennessee theme park complex. Olivier Odom and Jennifer Tipton said Tuesday they want the park to be more inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender families after Odom was asked to reverse her shirt when they visited Dollywood Splash Country next to the Pigeon Forge amusement park. The story was first reported by WBIR-TV in Knoxville. Dollywood spokesman Pete Owens said on Tuesday that Dollywood is open to all families, but their dress code ...
States Will Be Slammed by Default
Post Date: 2011-07-27 20:18:43 by go65
7 Comments
Pew reports that a federal default will cascade through state governments, forcing tax increases and budget cuts on local taxpayers. Medicaid budgets would be slashed. Federal money for unemployment benefits would halt. State colleges would lose federal grants. Different states would experience different kinds of shock. Take Colorado. A federal default would cause more than 53,000 federal employees to be furloughed. All national parks would be shut down, and thousands of military service members would not be paid until a deal is reached. With Colorado’s large military presence, this could strike at the incomes of many families. Moody’s has created a watch list warning the ...
McCain Blasts Tea Party for 'Foolish' Demands in Debt Debate
Post Date: 2011-07-27 15:17:31 by Skip Intro
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As Speaker of the House John Boehner is looking for votes on his House debt bill, one Senate Republican sent a strong message to the Tea Party block in the House and Senate that are still withholding their support: get on board. Senator John McCain’s, R-AZ., message was in particular aimed at those who are withholding their support for any debt ceiling bill – Republican or Democratic – holding the Balanced Budget Amendment passage as a precondition to the debt limit increase. “To hold out and say we won't agree to raising the debt limit until we pass a Balanced Budget Amendment to the constitution. It’s unfair, it's bizarre,” McCain railed on the ...
Boehner Issues Blunt Warning to Dissenters to Back Plan
Post Date: 2011-07-27 14:25:47 by go65
1 Comments
WASHINGTON — Republicans and Senate Democrats fine-tuned their competing plans for resolving the looming fiscal crisis Wednesday, with an increasing number of House members yielding to Speaker John Boehner’s blunt command to line up behind his bill even as his staff frantically moved to alter it. Congressional leaders alternately voiced optimism, determination and a haggard frustration as they struggled to make both the dollars and the votes add up. The Congressional Budget Office, which last night forced the Republican leaders back to the drawing board by ruling that their plan fell short of their promises, told the Democratic side in the Senate that its approach, including ...
The Political Theater and the Debt Ceiling Crisis: Are We Being Had?
Post Date: 2011-07-27 14:12:33 by Capitalist Eric
4 Comments
In my last column I suggested that an unintended outcome of the debt ceiling impasse could be Congress’ loss of the power of the purse. In this column I suggest an intended outcome that the ongoing political theater might be designed to produce. President Obama has said that he will not resort to the various powers open to him to keep the government running should Congress fail to deliver a debt ceiling increase. This is a suspicious statement, as it is not credible that a president would leave troops at war unpaid and without supplies, Social Security checks unsent and stand aside while the US dollar collapses and the credit rating of the US government is destroyed. There are ...
This Is What A Collapsing Ponzi Scheme Looks Like: Housing Market Headed Off A Cliff As A Shocking 10.8 Million Mortgages At Risk Of Default
Post Date: 2011-07-27 14:10:01 by Capitalist Eric
12 Comments
You might want to sit down for this one. As bad as the housing crisis has been over the past three years, it has only been a warm up to what we have headed our way. Laurie Goodman, from Amherst Securities, has been tracking the housing market as well as anyone. She just presented her latest findings at the American Enterprise Institute and it is a horrific forecast, to say the least. As she puts it, 10.81 million homes are at risk of default over the next 6 years. Even if we try to be extremely conservative we can’t get the number below 8.7 million units.” With defaults already piling up, the shadow inventory of homes has been growing rapidly, and given this new data the number ...
The Debt Showdown: The GOP's "Blank Check" Lie
Post Date: 2011-07-27 13:21:51 by go65
3 Comments
Raising the debt ceiling is not equivalent to dispensing a blank check. In fact, Republicans, in Orwellian fashion, are turning black into white. With a blank check, a bearer is free to write (and then spend) any amount he or she places on the note. Thus, a blank check enables future spending. Raising the debt ceiling is about permitting the US government to cover past spending—and the blank checks of the past. These particular blank checks were issued by the Republicans during the Bush years. They voted (with the help of some Democrats) for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq without budgeting for them. They did the same with a Medicare prescription-drug benefit. They also green-lighted ...
Stocks, Commodities Fall on Debt Standoff
Post Date: 2011-07-27 12:49:16 by go65
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tocks fell for a third day and commodities slid as a stalemate over the debt ceiling pushed the U.S. closer to default and durable-goods orders unexpectedly dropped. The dollar rallied, while Brazilian shares neared a bear market. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost 1.1 percent to 1,317.29 at 11:48 a.m. in New York. The cost of insuring against default on Treasuries climbed to the highest level since February 2010 even as U.S. debt recovered from earlier losses. Gold reached a record $1,628.05 an ounce as investors sought haven assets, while coffee and oil lost more than 1 percent to lead the S&P GSCI Index of raw materials down 0.4 percent. The Dollar Index rose 0.8 percent. ...
Paul Ryan accidentally admits GOP has been lying about its budget plan
Post Date: 2011-07-27 12:43:39 by go65
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As you may know, the Democratic debt ceiling plan contains $1 trillion in savings from ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Republicans have called that a gimmick, and Paul Ryan is particularly pissed off because Democrats are pointing out that his own budget plan (the one that ended Medicare) contains the exact same $1 trillion in savings. According to Ryan, his plan never included this savings, but that's a lie, and a document he just released proves it. When Ryan released his plan, he claimed it would cut either $5.8 or $6.2 trillion, depending which baseline fiscal scenario you compared it against. According to his own proposal, his plan would cut "$6.2 trillion in ...
CBO Analysis of Reid Plan - $2.2 trillion in savings [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2011-07-27 09:39:21 by go65
46 Comments
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated the impact on the deficit of the Budget Control Act of 2011, as proposed in the Senate on July 25, 2011. The legislation would: Establish caps on discretionary spending through 2021, including separate caps on new funding for war-related activities, Allow for certain amounts of additional spending for "program integrity" initiatives aimed at reducing the amount of improper benefit payments and enhancing compliance with tax laws, Extend and expand authority to auction licenses for parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, Make changes to the Pell Grant and student loan programs, Reduce certain payments to agricultural producers, ...
Spaceflights From Desert Depend on New Jobs
Post Date: 2011-07-27 09:18:05 by go65
20 Comments
The frontier of commercial spaceflight, which opened when NASA’s shuttle program ended this month, is taking shape in an unfinished assembly of metal, glass and concrete that resembles a rust-colored stingray burrowed halfway into New Mexico’s desert. “Spaceport America” bills itself online as “the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport” and will be the official home of Virgin Galactic, billionaire Richard Branson’s venture that proposes to take tourists into suborbital space. It’s about 75 miles southwest of the Trinity atomic-bomb test site where the U.S. ushered in the nuclear age 66 years ago. It’s even closer to the mobile ...
The no-kids-allowed movement is spreading
Post Date: 2011-07-27 00:24:16 by A K A Stone
14 Comments
What's the matter with kids today and why doesn't anyone want them around? In June, Malaysia Airlines banned babies from many of their first class cabins, prompting other major airlines to consider similar policies. Lately, complaints about screaming kids are being taken seriously, not only by airlines, but by hotels, movie theaters, restaurants, and even grocery stores. Read more about restaurants around the country banning kids. Earlier this month, McDain's, a Pittsburgh area restaurant that banned kids under 6 became a mascot for the no-kids-zone movement. According to a Pittsburgh local news poll, more than half of area residents were in favor of the ban. And now big ...
DHS Fears a Modified Stuxnet Could Attack U.S. Infrastructure
Post Date: 2011-07-27 00:15:40 by A K A Stone
1 Comments
One year after the discovery of a sophisticated worm that was used to attack centrifuges in Iran’s nuclear program, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security told Congress it fears the same attack could now be used against critical infrastructures in the U.S. DHS “is concerned that attackers could use the increasingly public information about the code to develop variants targeted at broader installations of programmable equipment in control systems. Copies of the Stuxnet code, in various different iterations, have been publicly available for some time now,” Bobbie Stempfley, acting assistant secretary for the DHS Office of Cybersecurity and Communications, told the House ...
Clorox rejects Icahn's second bid
Post Date: 2011-07-26 22:32:48 by Fred Mertz
1 Comments
On Tuesday July 26, 2011, 5:53 pm EDT OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- The Clorox Co. has rejected billionaire investor Carl Icahn's second $10.7 billion bid for the company, dismissing the offer as inadequate. The consumer products company dismissed Icahn's first $10.2 billion offer last week as too low. Icahn, a hedge fund manager, increased his offer by almost 5 percent a few days later. Clorox said Tuesday that its board has unanimously dismissed the latest $80 per share offer, saying it undervalues the company and is not credible. The company also said its board felt Icahn's offer lacked detail, and it is open to considering any other offers. Icahn, Clorox's biggest ...
CBO sends Boehner back to drawing board
Post Date: 2011-07-26 20:31:58 by go65
9 Comments
With the clock ticking down, House Speaker John Boehner will rewrite his debt ceiling legislation to ensure that it meets his oft-stated pledge to cut spending more than Congress increases the federal borrowing limit. That was the word from Boehner's office after the Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday evening estimated that the Budget Control Act of 2011 would reduce deficits by only $851 billion over 10 years. By contrast, Boehner's bill would have allowed for an immediate debt ceiling increase of $900 billion. Click for Full Text!
House conservatives confident Boehner plan doesn’t have the votes to pass
Post Date: 2011-07-26 16:31:28 by go65
7 Comments
House conservatives are confident that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) does not have the votes at present to pass his debt-ceiling plan, and they are pushing for changes to it. “I am confident that as of this morning that there are not 218 Republicans in support of the plan,” said Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (Ohio), who said he is voting against the plan. Click for Full Text!
Sugar in the Tank
Post Date: 2011-07-26 14:37:08 by go65
4 Comments
When Representative John Mica, a Republican from Florida and chair of the House Transportation Committee released his proposal for the overdue Surface Transportation Reauthorization bill earlier this month, liberals condemned the plan’s lack of investment in infrastructure. They missed, however, a bigger failing: Transportation spending is not just underfunded in this country; it’s broken, and we can’t afford to wait another six years to fix it. House Republicans, though, haven’t proposed sensible transportation policy changes, even ones conservatives should support. Smart-growth advocates, unions, and environmentalists had been excited by President Barack Obama’s ...
Video Reveals Bank ‘Activity’ A Requirement For Wisconsin Voter ID
Post Date: 2011-07-26 14:30:27 by Brian S
1 Comments
A Wisconsin woman recorded the process of getting her son an ID to vote. She discovered that the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) could refuse to issue the constitutionally-mandated ID card if the voter’s bank account did not show enough “activity.” The clerk couldn’t explain what would happen if a resident was homeless or unemployed. The DMV also told her that voters would be charged $28 if they didn’t check a special box to indicate the ID was for voting, effectively making the fee a poll tax. Watch this video, uploaded July 23, 2011. S
NOPE! Top House Conservatives Says Boehner Lacks Sufficient GOP Support To Raise Debt Limit
Post Date: 2011-07-26 12:44:24 by Brian S
1 Comments
Brian Beutler | July 26, 2011, 12:25PM One of the most influential conservatives in Congress says he's confident his own Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) will lack the votes to pass his plan to raise the debt limit in the House of Representatives. Complicating matters further for Boehner -- the Dems' top vote counter wryly suggested at a simultaneous press briefing that few, if any, Democrats will vote for the GOP's bill, since there is a preferable Democratic plan waiting in the wings. That suggests House conservatives are holding the line against any debt limit increase that can plausibly pass the Senate -- and that Democrats will have added leverage to muscle their own plan ...
Oregon Congressman David Wu Says He's Resigning
Post Date: 2011-07-26 12:40:20 by Brian S
15 Comments
WASHINGTON — Democratic Rep. David Wu of Oregon has announced that he is resigning in the wake of allegations that he had a sexual encounter with an 18-year-old woman. Democratic leaders had called for a House Ethics investigation after the initial reports of the allegation. Wu had said that whatever occurred was consensual. Wu said Tuesday the well-being of his children should come first, so he will resign after Congress resolves the debate over the debt ceiling. Wu, 56, has won seven terms. In 2004, he won despite acknowledging a decades-old college incident in which he tried to force a former girlfriend to have sex. Voters said they disliked an opponent's attempt to use that ...
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