In the 1970s, that budget was more than 4% of GDP, too little to meet America's needs even then, but at least within the ballpark. Then came Reagan and the goal to "starve the beast," meaning to cripple the government by cutting tax revenues so that spending would have to decline as well.

The non-defense discretionary budget fell to under 4% and continued to slide. By 2008, in the final year of the Bush Presidency, it had declined to 3.7% of GDP, and was no longer able to fund programs in science, technology, energy, climate change, education, job training, and infrastructure needed to keep America modern and competitive......

By now, the non-defense discretionary budget of Obama is less than under Bush, measured relative to the size of the economy. It now stands at around 3.4% of GDP.....

Now here's the rub. President Obama seems intent now on a fiscal deal within the next few weeks that will make all of this permanent. All of the great vision and dreams will come to nothing if there is no budget to support them. And yet what is the White House championing?

I kid you not: the White House is touting a budget based on a baseline in which the non-defense discretionary budget will fall sharply in the coming years, to just 2.4% of GDP by 2022. That would be the lowest level in decades. It would make impossible the realization of the vision in yesterday's great speech.

And the truth is even worse. The 2.4% that would be left for all of the uplifting investments in his inaugural address also includes national security spending such as homeland security. If you strip out the national security spending from the 2.4% of GDP, we'd have just 1.7% of GDP available for all federal discretionary programs not related to national security and defense.

We need more revenues. Period. And not just small and symbolic revenues, but robust new revenues to fund expanded federal programs in education, infrastructure, science, technology, and the environment. A reasonable estimate is that the Federal Government would need at least 2% of GDP per year more in revenues compared with the current situation. These could be found in a variety of ways: taxes on high net worth, a financial transactions tax, an end of corporate loopholes, a tax on carbon emissions, and so forth.

So here's my recommendation. Let's pay careful attention to what the President proposes in actual budget spending and revenues in the next few weeks. Let's keep our eye on the discretionary part of the budget - the part that will fulfill his vision or leave it as merely nice words - and then let us judge. Are we a country prepared to invest in our future -- or only to speak eloquently about it as the environmental crises multiply and the economy continues to stagnate?

BEIJING - Experts at a Chinese think tank said China is likely to surpass the United States in an all-around way by 2049, the year the People's Republic of China will celebrate its centennial anniversary.

According to a report released Tuesday by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation will be realized and the country will surpass the US as long as it nurtures sound "national health".

The report defines "national health" as the overall operational condition of a country, using resource sufficiency and wealth distribution as the major criteria.

National health is the greatest form of capital China can use to surpass the US, the report said.

The report said China's national health has been better than that of the US since 2007, adding that its superior health will further expand in 2019, when China is expected to become the world's biggest economy.

The report includes assessments of the national health of 100 countries, analyzing factors such as natural and economic immunity, national decision-making and enforcement capacity and national responsibilities. The countries were also classified into four categories in terms of their national health status.

China was ranked 11 with a national health status of "up to standard", while the US, Japan and Britain were given a status of "health deficient" among 37 countries.

Sweden, Finland and Australia were ranked among the top 10 countries with a status of "surplus health".

Ethiopia, Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan were ranked at the bottom due to their "weak health condition", according to the report.

The report said that the US health status is deteriorating in tandem with its economic downturn, despite the fact that the US is still a nation of wealth and power.

China's national health is ascending due to its advantageous economic immunity, capacity for regulation and credibility, the report said. http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2013-01/08/content_16097039.htm

SHANGHAI - Economic growth in China will be about 8.5 percent this year, with domestic demand being the driving force for expansion, a Bank of Communications report predicted.

Demand from Europe and the United States will bottom out and boost Chinese trade. Exports will rise about 8.5 percent this year from 2012 and imports will climb 10 percent, the report released on Friday said.

Domestic demand will continue to replace investment as the leading engine for economic growth, according to the report. It forecast nominal growth for retail sales at 16 percent and actual growth rate at 12.5 percent in 2013.

China will adopt loose fiscal and stable monetary policies to support the real economy. Its new lending will stand at about 9 to 9.5 trillion yuan ($1.43 to $1.51 trillion) in 2013, the report said.

China's gross domestic product grew 7.8 percent year on year to 51.93 trillion yuan, the first annual growth rate below 8 percent since 1999, National Bureau of Statistics data showed on Friday. http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2013-01/20/content_16146155.htm

The provision gives Amgen an additional two years to sell Sensipar without government controls. The news was so welcome that the company’s chief executive quickly relayed it to investment analysts. But it is projected to cost Medicare up to $500 million over that period.

Amgen, which has a small army of 74 lobbyists in the capital, was the only company to argue aggressively for the delay, according to several Congressional aides of both parties.

But critics, including several Congressional aides who were stunned to find the measure in the final bill, pointed out that Amgen had already won a previous two-year delay, and they depicted a second one as an unnecessary giveaway. “That is why we are in the trouble we are in,” said Dennis J. Cotter, a health policy researcher who studies the cost and efficacy of dialysis drugs. “Everybody is carving out their own turf and getting it protected, and we pass the bill on to the taxpayer.”

How much do the newly enacted tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans actually affect them? Hardly at all.

Almost all of the debate that convulsed Capitol Hill in December concerned the reinstatement of the highest marginal tax rate on earned income — that is, on wages and salaries. But as Fitzgerald said, the rich are different from you and me, and one of the primary ways they’re different is that they don’t get their income from wages and salaries.

In 2006, the bottom four-fifths of U.S. tax filers got 82?percent of their income from wages and salaries, a Congressional Research Office study found. The richest 1 percent, however, got just 26?percent of their income that way; for the richest one-tenth of 1 percent, the figure is just 18.6?percent.

The study also looked at dividends and capital gains. The bottom four-fifths got just 0.7?percent of their income from those sources. (Those who believe we’ve become an “ownership society,” please take note.) The wealthiest 1 percent, however, realized 38.2?percent of their income from investments, and the wealthiest one-tenth of 1 percent realized more than half: 51.9?percent.

The tax deal Congress passed last week raised the top rate on wages and salaries from 35?percent to 39.6?percent. The rate on income from capital gains and dividends, however, was raised to only 20 percent from 15 percent. There has been no rending of garments nor gnashing of teeth from our super-rich compatriots; they got one sweet deal....

Yet wages, which are descending, are taxed at a higher rate than income derived from corporate profits — capital gains and dividends. Far from mitigating the consequences of this shift, the U.S. tax code reinforces the redistribution from wages to profits. Broadly speaking, it rewards the winners of this epochal shift and penalizes the losers, who are the vast majority of Americans.

The lower tax rates for capital gains and dividends, then, effectively reward offshoring more than work done within the United States, increase economic inequality and deprive the federal government of revenue it will need to support an aging population and meet its other obligations. None of this upsets Republicans, but it would be nice if Democrats realized that these tax breaks undermine everything they stand for.

meyersonh@washpost.com

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-01-08/opinions/36233031_1_income-tax-filers-capital-gains

"While Obama has made some cosmetic changes, he has not stopped the systematic use of torture in the basic functioning of the U.S.’ repressive apparatus. In the U.S. itself, there are tens of thousands of prisoners (though no one knows the exact number) kept in solitary confinement, robbed of human contact, and suffering full sensory deprivation and violent “cell extractions,” practiced regularly. By any moral or legal standard, this constitutes torture. Obama decriminalized and codified torture when he refused to prosecute those responsible for this during the Bush regime, letting war criminals off.

..........

Zero Dark Thirty is a terribly harmful film. It upholds—and trains people in—an America-first fanatical get-the-bad-guy-at-any-cost patriotism. It celebrates ignorance of the crimes of this government and tremendous and violent arrogance. It is a film that celebrates imperial revenge.

After Maya’s colleague is killed by a suicide bomber, she says, “I’m going to kill everyone involved in that op and then I’m going to kill Osama bin Laden.” She calls herself a “motherfucker” and you’re supposed to cheer. Someone who won’t take shit, America first and fuck the rest, we’re not fucking around with that namby-pamby human rights bullshit, we’re coming after “America’s enemies.”

Think I’m exaggerating?

The official website of the movie has a link to a video game, “Medal of Honor Warfighter,” with a special “Zero Dark Thirty” edition advertising the ability to “join the greatest manhunt in history.” It goes on to say that “Medal of Honor Warfighter allows players to step into the boots of the soldiers who led the hunt for Bin Laden and takes you to the locations where only the most elite dare enter.” They advertise one game where you can “roam the treacherous hills and navigate the unforgivable terrain to take down enemies and achieve victory.”

This from a film where you never meet anyone from the countries the CIA is operating in who is not some form of evil incarnate. In fact, the only favorable Muslim character in the film is a CIA agent in a DC office.

All this calls to mind the glee and titillation of the Roman coliseums where the audience could watch torture and torment as a spectacle. Or to draw on a more recent, if fictional, example, the sick excitement of those in the capital watching “the hunger games.”

We need to stand on principle, give voice to and make common cause with the people of the world in opposition to the crimes our government is committing in our name. We don’t need sycophants to a system of brutality, exploitation and murder.

Do not become numb to the crimes of your government because it is unpleasant to confront.

Do not stand by in complicit silence or enthusiastic cheers while the humanity and rights of others are systematically stripped away.

Wake up, speak out, stand up.

"So-called Free Trade is destroying our national manufacturing base. According to a new report by the National Bureau of Economic Research, free trade relations with China, beginning in 2000, are responsible for cutting 30% of the manufacturing jobs we have in this nation. You can see this decline in the raw numbers. Around 2001, there were 17 million manufacturing jobs in America.

Today – that’s dropped off drastically to 11.5 million. And according to the Economic Policy Institute – nearly 3 million of those lost manufacturing jobs went directly to China since 2001. Thanks to so-called Free Trade, our policymakers are exporting those crucial blue-collar jobs that sustained a prosperous middle class, from the end of World War 2 all the way until the 1980’s.

And without those jobs, Americans are forced into the minimum wage service sector, asking, “Would you like Fries with that?” or greeting people at the door saying, “Welcome to Wal-Mart.” This is exactly what the transnational billionaires who push for these trade agreements want.

And until we drop out of these so-called free trade agreements, and once again begin protecting domestic manufacturing with tariffs or VAT taxes – the middle class will continue to shrink – and America will look more and more like a collapsed nation that’s exported all of its wealth to the rest of the world." - http://m.thomhartmann.com/forum/2013/01/free-trade-vs-middle-class