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By Catherine Lutz
$17.28
By Joe Conason
$11.66
$23
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Flickr.com / mindfrieze
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As budget hawks continue their attack on spending cuts around the country, it might be useful to look at the Pentagon after a report released Thursday claimed that at least $7 billion in taxpayer funds is being wasted on purchases of spare parts that the military ends up not needing.
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By David Sirota — There is record support for marijuana legalization, as more Americans see the drug war for what it really is. But framing the debate in terms of tax revenue is just bad politics.
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By Joe Conason — The collapse of American infrastructure is a shamefully old story by now, featuring scary statistics that must be updated regularly as the situation worsens.
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AP / Petros Giannakouris
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The origins of Greece’s economic crisis lie with the recklessness of the rich, but the consequences are directly affecting the poor: A new poll shows that three-quarters of the Greek population believe that the current plans to cut the country’s budget deficit are “socially unfair.”
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For all their talk of deficits, conservatives don’t ever want to pay for them. Rush Limbaugh says people making more than $250,000 a year—who may just have to brace for a tax hike to keep our budget shortfalls somewhere in this galaxy—do not qualify as wealthy.
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whitehouse.gov
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President Barack Obama on Monday announced his proposed 2011 budget, which includes boosted spending for creating jobs and waging wars, a potential tax on big banks, funding for infrastructure on the state and city levels ... and a whopping $1.6 trillion deficit for the fiscal year.
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By Joe Conason — There are many reasons why Barack Obama’s spending freeze, which appears to be nothing more than pandering to the angry right, will not work as policy or politics.
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White House / Pete Souza
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As part of his State of the Union address Wednesday, the president is expected to call for a three-year freeze on non-military, non-entitlement discretionary spending that amounts to a small fraction of the budget. It’s a stunt, for the most part, aimed at soothing budget-conscious independents. (continued)
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http://gov.ca.gov/
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What’s to be done about California’s budget woes? Well, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is cutting way back on spending on such superfluous concerns as “health, welfare, transport and the environment,” according to the BBC. But really, this’ll hurt him more than it’ll hurt ... oh, never mind.
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Flickr / TenSafeFrogs
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The nation’s biggest and richest state has been called ungovernable because, among other reasons, budgets and taxes have to be approved by a two-thirds majority of the Legislature. George Lakoff, the guy who gave us framing, is out to change things. (continued)
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By Ruth Marcus — This was, nationally and globally, a lousy decade. I hate to put a damper on your holiday season, but the next one has every prospect of being worse.
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By Ruth Marcus — There was a nice, albeit fleeting, moment in the spring when hospitals, doctors, drug companies and insurers came together at the White House, pledging to do their part to get health care costs under control.
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AP / Charles Rex Arbogast
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By Peter Z. Scheer — The other “peace candidate” in the 2008 Democratic primary isn’t thrilled with the president’s order to radically escalate the war in Afghanistan, no matter if there’s an exit strategy: “What are we going to learn in 18 months that we haven’t already learned in the last eight years?”
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AP / Charles Rex Arbogast
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The other “peace candidate” in the 2008 Democratic primary isn’t thrilled with the president’s order to radically escalate the war in Afghanistan, no matter if there’s an exit strategy: “What are we going to learn in 18 months that we haven’t already learned in the last eight years?”
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The president’s mix-and-match approach to Afghanistan will make no one very happy. Yet it might be the least dangerous choice.
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By David Sirota — Save $110 billion, or spend $6.3 trillion? In recent months, tea party protesters and Congress’ so-called fiscal conservatives chose the latter.
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AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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In a move that some are praising as a major victory against the powerful weapons lobby, President Barack Obama was able to cut out several expensive programs, thus cutting down on defense spending, in the new $680 billion dollar military bill he signed Wednesday. However, before we get too excited, let’s be clear here: That’s still $680 billion, after all.
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Flickr / ThisParticularGreg
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Executing people is expensive. A new report by the Death Penalty Information Center says California is spending more than 10 times as much on capital punishment—$137 million a year—as it would on an alternative life-without-parole system. New York and New Jersey repealed ...
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0-60mag.com
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If you thought last year’s federal budget deficit was pretty big, you were right—and it’s three times as big now! Thanks to the magic of the recession, as well as the government’s attempts to rescue various sectors of the economy (and throw money at others, or so it appeared), the deficit for the 12 months ending last month was a whopping $1.42 trillion.
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Flickr / gregwest98
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The House of Representatives decided it was worth keeping this whole America thing going, and passed a temporary spending bill while lawmakers hammered out the usual long-term budgets. The new funds will help keep the Postal Service afloat and expand House office budgets by 8 percent.
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California Emergency Management Agency
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By G.W. Schulz, California Watch —
Records show that communities across California had difficulty managing millions in anti-terrorism grants handed out by Congress after Sept. 11.
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David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star —
Posted on Aug 24, 2009
READ MORE 
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By Ruth Marcus — Does President Obama care about passing health care reform that truly gets costs under control and getting the nation’s fiscal house in order or does he care more about getting re-elected?
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Flickr / kevindooley
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After losing about $7 billion this fiscal year, the U.S. Postal Service may shut down as many as 700 local post offices. The postmaster general has also asked Congress to approve cutting deliveries to five days a week.
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AP / Alex Brandon
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On Monday, after two of President Obama’s economic sidekicks, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers, made noises over the weekend about the possibility that middle-class Americans may pay higher taxes in the near future, the White House went into damage control mode.
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DoD / Cherie A. Thurlby
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By Joe Conason — Fiscal conservative is one of those terms used by politicians of all sorts to describe themselves, without any real justification. That phrase is often used to mislead the public about the priorities and policies favored by those who claim to embody budgetary prudence.
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Flickr / Kiwi Flickr
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Soon California can stop being the butt of jokes—although seriously, Alabama, let’s not point fingers. Party elders in Sacramento have reached an agreement that should balance the budget with $15.5 billion in cuts that will hurt students, the poor, children and the elderly. Republicans, who make up only about a third of the state Legislature, managed to thwart any new taxes.
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This week’s show includes two Republicans filling in for Tony Blankley—Mike Murphy and John Henke—making this episode more like “Left, Right, Right & Center,” if you will. Robert Scheer joins them to weigh in about the Sotomayor hearings, the future of the GOP and what to do about the health care conundrum, among other lively topics.
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Flickr / Franco Folini
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Looks like Republicans are going to win out in California’s seemingly endless budget battle, despite holding a minority in the state Legislature. The deal lawmakers are inching toward favors Gov. Schwarzenegger’s desire to make the poor, the elderly and schoolchildren pay for the state’s financial crisis.
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Wikimedia Commons/Revisorweb
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America’s spend-a-thon has brought some inevitable consequences, not the least being that we now are looking at a federal budget deficit of more than $1 trillion for the first time ever, and that number is projected to nearly double by October.
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ekgpulse.com
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Let’s see if this one takes. After critics blasted an earlier, more expensive version, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee took another crack at a plan to provide coverage for tens of millions of Americans without health insurance. The latest plan, released Thursday, comes at the lower cost of $611.4 billion, as opposed to the $1 trillion proposal that didn’t go over so well last month.
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U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Jim Greenhill
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Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a Democratic proposal to cut $11.4 billion in spending, saying that “the Legislature must solve the entire [$27 billion] deficit ... and must not push the problem off to tomorrow.” With IOUs now a certainty and the state in financial ruin, a prominent Democrat called the governor’s stance “the most irresponsible thing that I’ve seen in my 15 years of public service.”
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Flickr / denn
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Unable to agree whether to raise taxes or cut spending, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state’s lawmakers will instead rely on time travel. Sacramento hopes to “save” somewhere around $10 billion by shifting costs to next year’s budget and resorting to other accounting tricks.
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AP photo / David J. Phillip
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Kobe Bryant and the Lakers brought the NBA championship trophy back to Los Angeles and with it cause for celebration, but how can a city struggling to make ends meet justify the traditional $2 million victory parade? By making the team and private donors pay for it.
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gov.ca.gov
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As if delivering the tagline of his latest movie, California’s governor announced to the state Legislature Tuesday that the “day of reckoning is here.” But Democrats are fighting Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to cut funding for schools, the poor and sick children while refusing to raise taxes.
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By Matt Welch —
Instead of making the positive case for big government, or at least beginning to explain, let alone defend, what Sacramento does with all that money, California’s political class has instead opted for a four-pronged strategy: deny, scare, attack, then call for higher taxes.
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AP photo / Rich Pedroncelli
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By Robert Scheer — I expected a federal government that has spent trillions salvaging the banks that got us into this mess to find the relatively minor sums needed to bail out California and other states that have been the victims of Wall Street’s dangerous games. But I didn’t count on the tough-love steeliness of the Obama administration.
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The “Real Time” host laments the ballot initiative, which, he says, has made his home state ungovernable: “This is why America’s founders wanted a representative democracy, because they knew if you gave the average guy the chance, he’d vote for a fantasy world with no taxes, free beer and vagina trees.”
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Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been reasserting himself, for good or ill, in the public sphere this week. President Obama was ready with his own take on torture, aka “extreme interrogation” methods. Is this a media-enabled setup or a legitimate face-off between executive powers past and present?
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Did President Barack Obama achieve anything at the G-20 summit besides showing up and pressing the flesh with other international political players? Tony Blankley isn’t so sure, but Robert Scheer and guest moderator Lawrence O’Donnell are ready with their rebuttals. And how about that ginormous budget plan?
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Flickr/Sam Ruaat
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Although the congressional GOP contingent wanted nothing to do with it, President Barack Obama’s $3.53 trillion budget package made the Senate cut on Thursday evening, passing with a 55-43 vote.
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Flickr / cursedthing
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Not a single House Republican voted for Barack Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget, but that didn’t stop the Democrats from passing it 233-196. The Senate is on its way to passing its own version, but the real clamor is over whether the final product will end up with reconciliation provisions that would filibuster-proof the president’s health care and energy proposals.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The most significant moment of Obama’s news conference concerned taxes: his defense of proposed limits on the benefits that the well-off get for their charitable contributions and mortgage payments.
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By Joe Conason — Listening to the president’s critics, it would be easy to believe that Obama is responsible for the deficits, bailouts, bonuses, nationalized institutions and careening markets. It would be easy to believe but it’s entirely false.
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By Marie Cocco — A court ruling offers a chilling compendium of accounts by doctors and other FDA professionals who were routinely thwarted as they tried to make the “morning after” pill available, especially to teenagers.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Critics who argue that he is asking Congress to do too much are finding it far easier to talk about an overloaded system than to tell those without health insurance that they will have to wait a few more years.
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mariopiperni.com / Mario Piperni
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The current year’s federal budget deficit, according to congressional economists, will top $1.8 trillion, the biggest ever by far. And their projection for the fiscal 2010 budget shortfall is tickling $1.4 trillion, putting both estimates much higher than they were in forecasts back in January.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — We are at the beginning of a great popular rebellion against those who showed no self-restraint when it came to lining their own pockets.
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By Joe Conason — Things are bad, and very likely to get worse—but the Republicans seem determined to plunge us into a real depression, gambling that catastrophe would return them to power.
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Another Memorial Day in This Endless War
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