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The end is in sight in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Clinton campaign Chairman Terry MacAuliffe said on the Today Show that his candidate will step out of the race and campaign for Barack Obama if she has not won the nomination by June 1. In that scenario, she would not compete in the June 3 primaries, the last of the season, in Montana and South Dakota.
In a speech in Charleston, W. Va, Clinton sounded as though she was making her last stand. She modified her stump speech, saying “if” instead of “when” she wins the
Democratic nomination. After her surprisingly narrow win in Indiana on Tuesday, it seems increasingly unlikely that Clinton has a path to the nomination. Former President Carter, who remains uncommitted in the race, has said that superdelegates should go with whoever has won the most states, votes and delegates.
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He is probably not alone in that belief, and it wouldn’t take too many more delegates who feel that way to put Obama over the top. And with the language of defeat creeping into Clinton’s speech, it seems as though she’s pretty aware that her days in the race are numbered.
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President Bush announces $770 million in increased international food aid
5/1/2008 4:03 PM
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President Bush said today that more needs to be done to address the global food shortage, so today he is asking congress for an additional $770 million to support food aid and development programs.
More>>>
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Obama addresses Seniors Issues in Indiana
5/1/2008 12:15 PM
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Talking in Columbia City, Indiana today, Senator Obama advocated the elimination the income tax on social security, saying it would save senior citizens up to $1,400 a year. He said "If we eliminated the income tax on social security, there would be hundreds of thousands of seniors that wouldn't even have to file income tax."
Obama also spoke about health care reform, saying that negotiating prices with the pharmaceutical industry would save prescription drug users about 10 billion dollars per year and save tax payers about 20 billion dollars a year. "When congress designed the bad prescription drug bill, they decided because of lobbying from the prescription drug companies, that we would not be able to negotiate for the cheapest available price on drugs, the way the V.A. negotiates for the cheapest available price on drugs..."
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McCain Proposes a $5,000 Health Care Tax credit
4/29/2008 3:00 PM
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McCain proposes a $5,000 tax credit to help families pay for the health care of their choice. Speaking in Tampa, Florida today, John McCain said the answer to health care is not governmental control, but to make insurance companies compete in the open market.
He said the plan would be paid for by eliminating the tax exemption given to employers who pay a portion of their employees' coverage.
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First Stimulus Checks to come this week
4/28/2008 5:58 PM
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The first batch of the 130 Billion dollar stimulus package is going to be hitting consumers pockets this week. The Treasury Department has been hard at work getting the checks ready to go out. The Stimulus package was put together to help consumers to cope with the weakening economy. It was a Bipartisan package put together by both parties. Critics called it excessive spending that will not really help the economy to not enter a recession. Either way the people who are receiving their checks are going to be happy.
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As thousands of people are losing their homes, the dollar is in free fall and major hedge funds are collapsing, Alan Greenspan wants us to know that there are some serious problems with the economy.
Writing an op-ed in today's Financial times, Greenspan warned that this is the worst financial crisis since the end of the second world war and that it will "leave many casualties," but he warned his successor about over-regulating the markets as a result of the crisis.
His old bank, the Federal Reserve was working hard over the weekend to soften the landing and it has yet to be seen if the Fed's emergency measures will actually do anything to woo back investors fleeing from the dollar for the relative safety of gold and the Euro.
It sure is nice of Greenspan to check in and offer his advice and everything, but if he's so good at the whole "economics" thing, why do we even have a housing crisis to begin with?
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The economy is structurally sound, President Bush pronounced this week, but in one of those up-and-down kind of market fluctuations, it lost 63,000 jobs in the month of February.
That's almost 2200 jobs per day and one and a half jobs per minute. There's not one major company that could maintain that kind of uncontrolled job loss before being reduced to nothing, and our economy won't be able to for long either.
As for the presidential candidates, other than unprecedented fund raising abilities (on the democratic side at least), they don't seem to have any kind of plan beyond spouting anti-NAFTA rhetoric and they make no pretense of admitting that they in no way mean any of it.
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At least President Bush, when campaigning in 2000, pretended whole-heartedly that his economic policy would benefit those he claimed; he may have even genuinely thought it would. Obama and Clinton, however, make their winking and nudging offensively public. As for McCain, he has no plan whatsoever.
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We didn't take Nancy Pelosi to be the NASCAR type, but yesterday, as her home state of California was choosing who it wanted to see take the only job in the Democratic Party more powerful than her own, Pelosi was in her Capitol Hill office chatting with a NASCAR driver, maybe partially because nobody else was around. Pelosi, who was chosen last year to be the first female Speaker of the House, has remained neutral as her fellow members of Congress each campaign to be either the first female or first black White House contender. Pelosi doesn't wasn't to give the appearance of favoring one marginalized group over another, and to her credit, her legislative agenda has ignored the needs of both fairly evenly.
Moreover, throughout the Bush era, Democrats have become increasingly pre-occupied with the idea of making inroads among "NASCAR voters," a group that chooses which racer to support by the corporate logo emblazoned onto his or her car.
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It's understandable why this bloc would be attractive to politicians. NASCAR fans, and their love of sponsorships. They could streamline Washington with their love of sponsorships making it so much easier to explaining away huge corporate campaign donations, junkets, golf trips, and many of the other perks that come with a seat in Congress. And so, Nancy Pelosi didn't let party politics interfere with her important work as Speaker.
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There's only one day better than Christmas, and that's budget day. That's right, today, the day President Bush sends his massively flawed multi-trillion dollar budget for Congress to further pack with their own countless earmarks and then approve practically unanimously, flooding patrons and pet projects with untold federal dollars. Hooray!
This years budget, which the President assures us is the very model of fiscal restraint and measured miserlyness, weighs in at a mere $3.1 trillion dollars, which, in case you're wondering, is more money mere mortals dwelling outside the walls of the magical realm of Congress can even fathom. And it's not even done yet! But don't let the massive size of the budget and the frequent use of words like "entitlement" and "discretionary" fool you: we're up to our eyeballs in debt
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Not a penny of this budget is actually coming from every penny the government spends this year will be coming from the pockets of shrewd lenders in China, Saudi Arabia and Israel, you know, our good buds who are always there to make sure America never goes without a meal. Thanks foreign banks who invest heavily in US Treasury Bonds! To indulge in some culturally relevant metaphor: you guys are the wealthy absent father enabling of father we never had. We're going to go ahead and charge this next binge, too. We know you won't mind.
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Since we're looking at some national "downtime" at the moment, because there's nothing better for our legislators to be doing and because the whole steroids in baseball thing has blown over, Sen. Arlen Specter, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is investigating the NFL
It is alleged the Commissioner apparently destroyed some tapes that may have had evidence of the New England Patriots cheating - there's a surprise - and Specter wants to know why, though he promises it won't overtake the current Iraq war as a matter of national importance.
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Gee, thanks Arlen for that reassurance, though we still think is the most retarded thing Congress has gotten itself involved in, well, gosh, we guess IN JUST A COUPLE OF MONTHS since you guys were just issuing subpoenas to BASEBALL PLAYERS. My question is does he think it is more uregent than Health Care, Illegal Immigration, people losing their homes and other serious issues confronting this country.
Listen, we don't mean to get all preachy. We mention it because it's starting to be tax time, which is a very real reminder that, you know, we're paying for this. Every time Arlen Specter sends a letter to an NFL commissioner asking for an explanation for whatever stupid thing, we have paid for the stationary and the postage and the envelope and the ink and the whole thing and it's also time not spent looking into other kinds of destruction, say at the Central Intelligence Agency.
Just saying. Anyway, go Giants. By the way Senator Specter who are you rooting for?
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A deal was reached today between the White House and Congress to give out $600 to individual taxpayers and $1200 checks to taxpayer couples to jumpstart the economy. The checks will be paid out to anyone who paid income taxes last year or paid social security taxes.
Basically anyone who worked at all last year will be getting some kind of rebate. Considering Social Secuirty taxes are about 8% an individual would only have to make $7500 to get the full rebate. There is also talk of giving an additional $300 rebate out for each child. So a family of four could be elgible to receive an $1800 check.
Checks will be mailed out by the Treasury most likely by June 2008. The downside of this is that it will double this years deficit spending by the goverment to $320 Billion from $160 Billion and will be piling on more debt for our future generations to pay back. Leave it to the goverment to pay Peter by stealing from Paul to use an old adage.
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