As anti-tax activist hovers over deficit talks, some in GOP wonder if they’ve gone too far
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on July 4th, 2011 4:35 am by HL
As anti-tax activist hovers over deficit talks, some in GOP wonder if they’ve gone too far
WASHINGTON — Without a bipartisan agreement this summer to reduce the federal deficit and raise the debt limit, the economy could suffer a horrendous blow, leaders of both parties say. If that happens, some will point fingers at a bearded, slightly disheveled man who’s barely known outside political circles in Washington.
For two decades, Grover Norquist has been the driving force in pushing the Republican Party toward an ever-more rigid position of opposing any tax increase, of any kind, at any time. He has been so successful that some GOP officials fear they’ve let Norquist squeeze them into a corner where they’ll be unable to declare victory even if they win the great majority of their budget demands in negotiations with congressional Democrats and President Barack Obama.
Historic Maryland dome gets facelift
A July 4th pop quiz:
George Washington resigned under it. Ben Franklin designed the lightning rod on top of it. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison hung out on its balcony. You won’t see it this holiday.
Give up?
At NEA convention, mixed feelings among teachers for Obama ahead of 2012 vote
CHICAGO — When her union endorsed Barack Obama for president in 2008, retired Montgomery County teacher Jane Stern wrote checks to his campaign and spent hours calling voters in swing states to support a Democrat she though would stand strong for public schools and break from a federal education policy of “testing, testing, testing.”
Three years later, all the standardized tests are still there. In some places, they are beginning to be used to fire teachers. Lately, Stern said, the solutions to all of public education’s troubles seem to boil down to a refrain: “Blame it on the teacher who works her tail off for 14 hours a day.”
New guidance system for skies could face delays
Southwest Airlines Flight 658 pushes back from the gate and shows up as a blip on a radar screen in the tower at Dulles International Airport just before 7:30 a.m. Wednesday.
For the next 90 minutes, the plane will move as a blip across one radar screen after another, as a system introduced in the 1950s tracked and guided its progress to Chicago.
The safety of the Boeing 737 and 118 passengers will fall to at least 10 air traffic controllers and their radar displays — at Dulles, and in Warrenton, Leesburg, Indianapolis, Aurora and Elgin, Ill., and at Midway Airport.
