Showing posts with label Planned Parenthood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Planned Parenthood. Show all posts

Saturday, October 27, 2012

New York Times For Obama

English: Barack Obama delivers a speech at the...
English: Barack Obama delivers a speech at the University of Southern California (Video of the speech) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Barack Obama for Re-Election
the country could suffer another recession if the wrong policies take hold .... An ideological assault from the right has started to undermine the vital health reform law passed in 2010. Those forces are eroding women’s access to health care, and their right to control their lives. ...... Astonishingly, even the very right to vote is being challenged. ..... Mr. Obama has impressive achievements despite the implacable wall of refusal erected by Congressional Republicans so intent on stopping him that they risked pushing the nation into depression, held its credit rating hostage, and hobbled economic recovery. ........ Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, has gotten this far with a guile that allows him to say whatever he thinks an audience wants to hear. But he has tied himself to the ultraconservative forces that control the Republican Party and embraced their policies, including reckless budget cuts and 30-year-old, discredited trickle-down ideas. ...... approaches the election clearly ready for the partisan battles that would follow his victory ...... he would challenge the Republicans in the “fiscal cliff” battle even if it meant calling their bluff, letting the Bush tax cuts expire and forcing them to confront the budget sequester they created ........ Obama’s many important achievements, including carrying out the economic stimulus, saving the auto industry, improving fuel efficiency standards, and making two very fine Supreme Court appointments. ...... Obama has achieved the most sweeping health care reforms since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. The reform law takes a big step toward universal health coverage, a final piece in the social contract. ...... Starting in 2014, insurers must accept all applicants. Once fully in effect, the new law would start to control health care costs. ....... Obama prevented another Great Depression ...... Stimulus should come first, and deficit reduction as the economy strengthens. ..... At the last debate, Mr. Romney talked about funneling arms through Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which are funneling arms to jihadist groups. .... Obama, who appointed the impressive Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor ..... The extraordinary fact of Mr. Obama’s 2008 election did not usher in a new post-racial era. In fact, the steady undercurrent of racism in national politics is truly disturbing. ...... Romney .. says he is not opposed to contraception, but he has promised to deny federal money to Planned Parenthood, on which millions of women depend for family planning.
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Sunday, April 24, 2011

The US Military Budget Needs To Come Down To 100 Billion From 600

During his stay in England Kalecki met John Ma...Image via WikipediaI Fixed The Budget, You Can Too
The Washington Post: The Politics And Economics Of A Falling Dollar: in 1944 when Britain’s John Maynard Keynes and the United States’s Harry Dexter White conjured up the financial architecture for the global economy that served the world rather well from the end of World War II through the early 1980s. Since then, its shortcomings have been revealed by a series of financial crises that have become more severe and more frequent, with the fixes for one planting the seeds for the next ..... a new and better architecture has proven elusive ..... The dollar is used worldwide as the agreed-upon unit of exchange by producers and traders to price oil, minerals and other commodities. Ditto illicit dealers in drugs, weapons and other contraband....... Because it is the currency most easily exchanged, the dollar is on one side or the other of 85 percent of the transactions on global currency exchanges. When Indians buy Chilean wine, the transaction is usually conducted by converting rupees into dollars and then dollars into pesos. ..... by making it so cheap and easy to borrow money, we have been enabled and encouraged to live beyond our means, taking on so much debt that the dollar’s role as reserve currency is now called into question ..... foreign officials have been looking to diversify their portfolio. Indeed, that was just what they were doing in 2007 and 2008, until the euro crisis raised doubts about the next-likely alternative. ..... In the optimistic scenario, a credible budget deal is reached in Washington, the Fed manages to sop up all the excess liquidity it has created, and the long-term slide in the dollar remains gradual enough for the world to muddle through until a new order and a new architecture can emerge. ....... the failure to adopt a budget deal triggers a U.S. credit crisis that spawns a dollar crisis, which sets off another global financial crisis — one that makes the last one look like child’s play. ..... the heart of most of the economic issues we’re dealing with, from budget battles to the euro crisis to the rising price of gasoline.
America has to balance its budget, and the raging debate on the defunding or funding of Planned Parenthood is a loud act of denial. The Planned Parenthood's budget is peanuts. You could kick that organization out of existence and the US budget deficit will be as big as ever.

Some major cuts are needed. The number one item on the table has to be the size of the US military. It is too big. America can't afford it. I think the US military budget has to be brought down from the 600 billion it is today to a more manageable 100 billion. David Cameroon in Britain might have some tips to share.

Who takes care of the world then? What you do is you work towards rule of law also between nations. You build stronger international organizations. I can see need for future military action in the service of democracy like is going on in Libya. And I am all for it. But such exercises are best if they are UN sanctioned and many nations are involved.
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