Editorial Cartoons

This one is fabulous.  There are more here.

Showdown

We’re headed into a showdown and the government will soon be shutting down.  Make sure you impress your neighbors and friends by wielding these 11 facts from the Moogaz.  Bold points are the elevator lines.

1. The budget bill is for 2011.  That’s right. This year.  Congress couldn’t get its act together last year because of the election and since then they haven’t been able to agree on anything.  So here we are, in the middle of the year with no budget.  Seven stopgap measures has already been passed, the last one is due to expire Friday.  On Friday, the government shuts down.

2. Budgets have to start in the House.  This one did, which is why it’s called House HR 1.  The House is run by Republicans now, split really into two factions: the Tea Partiers led by Paul Ryan and the rest led by Boehner.  Democrats are in the minority but not in the Senate.  Harry Reid still runs the Senate.  Montagues.  Capulets.  Someone’s bound to die.

3. Tea Partiers said they wanted to cut $100B from the 2011 budget.  That was last Novermber.  Now we’re in April so they’ve prorated it to $60B.  Democrats have been willing to meet in the middle at $30B but Boehner can’t be seen as leaning left or he’ll get eaten by the primary monster in the next election.  Or lose his Leader position.  Or both.  He’s the proverbial rock.  Paper beats Rock.

4. For the guy next door who bugs you about numbers, $60B versus $30B is 4% versus 2% of 2011 Discretionary spending.  Discretionary spending is 14% of all spending.  So we’re talking about a battle over 0.28% of the Federal Budget.  That’s like arguing over buying a pair of shoes when you make $60K/year. http://goo.gl/73O31

4. Keep in mind that 50% of this Discretionary spending is Defense.  Republicans want to increase their budget by $8B; Democrats want to lower it by $1B.  The Montagues want tanks. The Capulets want middle class relief.

5. Republicans added riders to the House bill HR1.  These are amendments that don’t really have to do with the budget but ride along.   Nobody likes the riders.  They include:   http://goo.gl/NGy2a  The Montagues want to drive their tanks over the environment and anything remotely nice.

6. Keep in mind that earlier as part of a budget deal, tax breaks for high income earners were continued.  Rich people are cool.

7. And GE pays no income tax. Big businesses are cool too.  Jobs jobs jobs. (unless you work for a school or are doing something good for somebody; then your job is stifling job creation)

8. The economy is in a recession, people are being squeezed by higher prices and stagnant wages, and the top 1% has accumulated all of the wealth of the last 20 years.  But this budget proposes to cut:

• Cuts the EPA budget by 1/3rd – no more environmental protection (think BP oil spill). Actually the whole list of EPA cuts is even more fun to read: http://goo.gl/VJtW3
• Cuts UN funding and international assistance  (think Libya) http://goo.gl/dFHcO
• Cuts to Americorps and community programs: http://goo.gl/SLHza
• More cuts where I couldn’t find a damn list on the Internet to put here

Well, a lot of cuts. Even sports fisherman agree: http://goo.gl/GdetX  This all falls into point 8.  Which is that I hardly see any cuts to business or moneyed interests.  Cut taxes for the rich because they’re not rich enough [pat on back].  Now let’s cut programs for everyone else [go team].

9. Oh wait, the bill also wants to cut the new regulations that would regulate Wall Street.  Because Wall Street, with its record profits and vanishing regulation, really needs a break. That Bernie Madoff is a nice guy; what ever happened to him?

10. All of this starts over again when we debate the 2012 budget and the upcoming debt ceiling bill.  In a new look at mandatory spending, Paul Ryan would like to cut assistance to the poor and elderly and “restructure” Medicare.  Read this as slash and burn all in the effort to keep tax rates at “historic” 18 percent levels (0% if you’re GE :)).  He calls it the Path to Prosperity, unveiled today:  http://goo.gl/MqZ3h Paul Ryan has Congressional Health Care so he’s not worried.

11. By Saturday, one side will start losing.  I feel like it will be us.

Hope and Prediction

My hope is that either the FCC or the Department of Justice deny the pending merger of AT&T and T-mobile (I mean seriously, could we have any less competition in the mobile phone market?), but my prediction is that after “a careful review,” both entities will rubber stamp this thing.  Go corporate interests. 

In case you missed it AT&T has offered to buy T-Mobile  in a deal valued at $39 billion.

http://gigaom.com/2011/03/20/att-to-buy-t-mobile-for-39-billion-here-is-why/

Sprint had this to say:

The combination of AT&T and T-Mobile USA, if approved by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC), would alter dramatically the structure of the communications industry.  AT&T and Verizon are already by far the largest wireless providers.  A combined AT&T and T-Mobile would be almost three times the size of Sprint, the third largest wireless competitor.  If approved, the merger would result in a wireless industry dominated overwhelmingly by two vertically-integrated companies that control almost 80% of the US wireless post-paid market, as well as the availability and price of key inputs such as backhaul and access needed by other wireless companies to compete. The DOJ and the FCC must decide if this transaction is in the best interest of consumers and the US economy overall, and determine if innovation and robust competition would be impacted adversely and by this dramatic change in the structure of the industry.

And PC magazine sums it up in this article:  AT&T Buys T-Mobile: Great For Them, Bad For You

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2382279,00.asp

Can we get any more clear-cut that this is a bad corporate play?

Giving Up

This video lays it all out. Thanks again Jon Stewart.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
I Give Up - 9/11 Responders Bill
www.thedailyshow.com
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Like 3rd Grade Recess

We all know 3rd grade recess is a mix of bullies and nice kids.  The bullies are loud and destructive. The nice kids share their silly bands with you and teach you how to climb to the top of the monkey bars.  In the world of US politics right now, the loud bullies are the pundits on TV.  The louder and more obnoxious they are, the more people watch and the more ratings they get.  They’re not interested in civil discourse.

And there are the nice kids, quietly building the community, obeying the rules, and making the playground an enjoyable place to be.  In the world of politics, no one can hear them above the screech of the bullies.

We wonder why Congressional and Presidential confidence is only in the 30ies.  But everyone’s listening to the bullies.  Think how much confidence you’d have in your security if the nice kids were always getting beat up (I’m assuming you’re a nice kid).

Well, anyways, here’s a group of people who are hard at work building a snow fort and avoiding the bullies.  Let’s wish them success in taking down the bullies.  They have a website: http://www.fiscalcommission.gov/meetings and their last meeting is straight out of nice kid parties 101.  But if you’re rooting for the nice guy, and you’re tired of the bully – it’s a good watch.

Politics … well Sort of

Remember Am I Hot or Not, that tech-boom afternoon you spent rating people on looks, waiting for the ten after 3 hours of sixes.  Courtesy of Tom Scott, a self admitted geek comedian and blogger, we have Sexual Congress.  Make sure to look at winners, losers, and statistics after you play for a while.

It’s Getting Real

Several cool things are converging in Washington.

1) Obama’s Executive Order in December 2009 which directs departments to make their content more “transparent, participatory, and collaborative”.

2) Stimulus initiatives – like this one on page 136 of the Stimulus Bill (HR1) that directs $40M to be “allocated at the discretion of the HHS Secretary provided, That the funding … shall be used to accelerate the development and dissemination of research assessing the comparative effectiveness of health care treatments and strategies”

3) Health Care Bill mandates (somewhere in here)

Taken together, we’re finally starting to see some of the benefits of a government working on a problem.  Today, the HHS is announcing  http://www.hhs.gov/open/ which provides a central repository for health related data sets, tools, and records including standards on health related data.

It’s not glamorous. It’s data.  But it’s government working.  And that’s cool.

For Reference

The twenty-first century infographic version of the School House Rock video.