The Politics of Anything Goes
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on July 23rd, 2012 11:08 pm by HL
The Politics of Anything Goes
Thomas Edsall, New York Times
Barack Obama first captured the national spotlight with a speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston in which he called for an end to the politics of division. The audience roared back its applause at the end of almost every line:Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and…
Obama’s Responsible Call for Tax Increases
From Bad to Worse for President Obama
Joseph Curl, Washington Times
At the end of last week, a liberal guest on a radio talk show declared that not much was going on in the presidential campaign — not much save for Mitt Romney’s tenure with Bain Capital and whether he would release 20 years worth of tax returns, as demanded by Team Obama.But that’s the problem with those liberal goggles: When you put them on, you just can’t see the forest for the trees. A lot happened last week — and none of it was good for President Obama.
Promising Lives Cut Down as They Began
The Medicaid Albatross
Robert Samuelson, Washington Post
WASHINGTON — It's no secret that the states are in as much budget trouble as the federal government. Doubters should read a new report from a group headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and former New York Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch. By this account, states face four insistent forces: pension underfunding of at least $1 trillion; rapidly rising Medicaid spending; possible cuts in federal aid that provides $1 in $3 of state spending; and weak growth of tax revenues that, in 2011, remained 7 percent below their pre-recession peak.What looms are higher state taxes and…