After the Shutdown: No Time for Compromise

Will the Dems insist on a budget that addresses unemployment and inequality? Or will they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by seeking “common ground”?

Congressional Democrats were in an understandably celebratory mood after the shutdown schemes of Ted Cruz and the Tea Party went so awry that conservative stalwarts like Representative Sean Duffy were admitting, “Big picture: I think this was a horrible strategy.” What was horrible in the eyes of the Grand Old Partisans wasn’t the damage done to public services, the economy or confidence in the “full faith and credit” of the United States. It was the political cost: by the time Republicans allowed the government to reopen, the party’s favorability rating had fallen ten points—to 28 percent, the lowest level recorded for a major party since Gallup began asking the question in 1992.
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http://www.thenation.com/article/176801/after-shutdown-no-time-compromise?rel=emailNation#

Blackburn says ACA website costs 500 million and

was put together by a Canadian company ,,,,

Fox Column Shrugs Off Unprecedented Obstruction Of Obama's Judicial Nominees

Right-wing media continue to deny that President Obama's judicial nominees have faced unparalleled obstruction from congressional Republicans, and is mischaracterizing the legal philosophies of those nominees.

FoxNews.com contributor John Lott not only misled on the overwhelming hurdles President Obama's nominees have faced, he also rather bizarrely branded one nominee as "controversial," even though his legal opinions are based on well-established Supreme Court precedent.

From Lott's October 16 column:

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/18/fox-column-shrugs-off-unprecedented-obstruction/196502

Nancy says this shutdown was a way to stop Obama's accomplishments ...

McCain says it was an agonizing odyssey ...

I say the Republican party is an agonizing odyssey ....

So the right wing message is that we have reduced government spending for 2 years ...

2 years of reduced spending which has caused undue hardships on millions of Americans ....

The default has already begun

By Felix Salmon OCTOBER 14, 2013

FISCAL AND MONETARY POLICY | POLITICS | SOVEREIGN DEBT

The big question in Washington this week is whether, in the words of the NYT, we’re going to see “a legislative failure and an economic catastrophe that could ripple through financial markets, foreign capitals, corporate boardrooms, state budget offices and the bank accounts of everyday investors”. In this conception — and I have subscribed to it just as much as anybody else — the sequester is bad, the shutdown is worse, and the default associated with hitting the debt ceiling is so catastrophic as to be unthinkable.

This frame is a useful one, not least for the politicians in Washington, who seem to have become inured to the suffering caused by the shutdown, and downright blasé about the negative consequences of the sequester. Both of them could last more or less indefinitely were it not for the debt ceiling, which is helpfully providing a hard-and-fast deadline: Congress is going to have to come up with a deal before the ceiling is reached, because the alternative is, well, the zombie apocalypse.

There’s more than a little truth here: I’m a firm believer, for instance, that the president both can and should prioritize debt repayments in the event that the debt ceiling is reached. If we’re going to be so stupid as to hit the ceiling, then prioritizing debt service is the least-worst outcome. But at the same time, the situation is less binary than it looks, not least because the US government is already in default on its obligations.

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/10/14/the-default-has-already-begun/

and the greed starts ..... anew ...

David
October 15, 2013 at 18:45
This is great, these next 3 days are going to be a traders dream. Hope nothing gets done over the weekend either, next week will be a massive week.

Finally, A Better Tax System that can be Clearly Understood and Easily Implemented

Our present tax system is obsolete, riddled with loop holes, unfair and demands change! America needs a new tax system that would cure all the ills that have plagued our current tax system for so long. Adding a value-added tax (VAT) would do just that.

Benefits for individuals — this new tax system will:

eliminate all income taxes on the first $100,000 earned, which will abolish income taxes completely for approximately 100 million Americans

be a simpler system, making paying taxes easier for everyone

benefit most Americans whose take home pay will increase

help bring back the jobs that have been lost to other countries whose foreign VAT penalizes our exports; this will dramatically level the economic playing field


http://economyincrisis.org/the-value-added-tax-vat

It is due to the core establishment getting smaller and the peripherals

getting larger and becoming less important to keeping the core relatable ...

"The core part of their nations may be suffering a bit less, but that's only because the peripheries suffer more. This is a general pattern. Money today can only be made by taking it away from other people, who - paradoxically or not - don't have any to begin with. Our economies only managed to "grow" in recent decades, since about the late 1970's, because we borrowed from ourselves to buy products produced by people working for wages only a fraction of our own, and when borrowing from ourselves was no longer a viable option, arguably 10 years ago, though 30 years might ultimately prove a better estimate, we started borrowing from our own futures and those of our children. While the core, the financial and political system, which had accumulated by far the biggest part of the debt, escaped the blame and often even fortified itself by taking more and more away from the periphery."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023812797