The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    The Decider's picture

    48 Hours & Counting for Obama Cave

    By The Decider on Wed, 02/27/2013 - 12:50pm |

    You just KNOW it's going to happen!

    By the way, sorry I have been gone so long from blogging. I was hoping that whole painting thing would blow over.

    --W

    Comments

    "Sequester here we come!" My crystal ball is too exhausted from all the Republican fantasies. I can' t think beyond March 1. This whole austerity push is cruel and stupid. I am waiting for the wheels to fall of the Republican clown's tricycle.

    by trkingmomoe on Wed, 02/27/2013 - 5:13pm

    I don't think anything will happen in 48 hours.

    Unlike last summer's borrowing capacity crisis "Sequestering" has its effect over time.

    If we had  missed even one day of honoring maturing Govt Debt it would have taken a long time before the Market regained complete confidence in our Govt bonds.

    In comparison Sequestering is a self inflicted wound. On Monday some govt employees- including perhaps my daughter- will take a day of mandatory , unpaid vacation.And some of the services they usually provide won't be available. But if they then go back to work on Tuesday it will have had no permanent effect on our Credit rating.

    I read that the Administration negotiating strategy is to wait for constituent pressure to  build up on Congress and only then try to negotiate an alternative to Sequestration. True? Who knows? Certainly not me.


    by Flavius on Wed, 02/27/2013 - 5:14pm

    The one hope in "no cave" is that there is another manufactured, debt ceiling crises coming up in about a month.  No need to cave twice.


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 02/27/2013 - 5:47pm

    Gov't employees forced to take Monday off, will find everything they couldn't do on Monday waiting for them on Tuesday.

    And they will be expected to do it, on 10-20% less pay and less hours. (They will be banned from 'catching up' on their own time when they are not supposed to be there.)

    It's the old doing more with less mantra. It creates frustrated workers, deteriorating services and workers who quit, or learn to emulate Congressmen, by not giving a crap about the public. Which is exactly what the Republicans want, inefficient government for everyone but the bankers, CEO's and corporations.

    The announced FAA cuts will likely result in 'incidents':

    The 238 control towers facing possible closure met a criteria established by the FAA: They have fewer than 150,000 operations a year and fewer than 10,000 commercial airline operations.

    Pilots talking to pilots works but only so far, private pilots of small aircraft often don't talk at all when flying over or into small airports.


    by NCD on Wed, 02/27/2013 - 7:39pm

    There will still be a large pool of money in the pot. The rubber will meet the road when priorities are decided.

    Divvy up the Revenue collected and dispense it into 5 to 10 Departments, Equally.

    Each getting an equal share; if the republicans have a special interest and they want to increase the funding to their sacred cow , then all the others get an equal amount.  

    If the military wants 100 billion each department gets 100 billion.  I guess we'll need more revenue?

    Cut the duplications, cut the waste. Maybe NASA comes under the military department?

    If you're a department head, at the cabinet level  maybe you'll speak up louder, knowing the buck you save, is yours.  

    No more GSA 100's  once and for all we'll reign in the abuse of "too many Chiefs and not enough Indians"

    How do we get to the retirees of the military?  It has been said, there are more Admirals than there are ships, why are they on the payroll? Why are some folks allowed triple dipping (pensions) ? When there are folks with none?


    by Resistance on Wed, 02/27/2013 - 11:27pm

    Come back, Decider, we need you!  It turns out that Obama is going to put us in mortal danger to save a few bucks because of the sequester. Woodward is shocked, he has never seen Obama this crazy. Turns out, if we don't get another carrier to the Middle East pronto we might all die.

    And so we now have the president going out because of this piece of paper and this agreement. ‘I can’t do what I need to do to protect the country.’ That’s a kind of madness that I haven’t seen in a long time.”

     

    http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/bob-woodward-blasts-obama-madness-...

    On the other hand, maybe not. It is a sad commentary when the Republican closest to being sane is this guy. He thinks the Iranians might not be able to destroy us on a whim even if we do not go bankrupt holding them down. He thinks there are a few bucks that could be trimmed from the military.

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34118.htm


    by A Guy Called LULU on Wed, 02/27/2013 - 7:34pm

    Does the Commander and Chief have the power to raise money for the military?

    Surtax the rich, to support the military.  

    Why do the poor need an army; they have nothing to protect or lose.

    The middle class wants to protect the poor and themselves, in the event they become poor; with social safety nets.

    Sell war bonds and see who wants to protect the military? Taxation with direct representation.


    by Resistance on Wed, 02/27/2013 - 11:52pm

    OK, I meant 48 days and counting.  Simple typing error...


    by The Decider on Tue, 03/05/2013 - 10:49am

    Decider, you may have stumbled into something maybe correct for a change.  You know what they say about a stopped clock being right twice every 24 hours? (I'll explain it to you later.)  Well, maybe that's you in this case.

    E.J.Dionne, Jr. writes yesterday in the Washington Post:

    There are, believe it or not, grounds for hoping that the so-called sequester, stupid as it is, might open the way to ending our nation’s budget stalemate.

    Hope is in short supply right now, but the case for seeing a way out of the current mess rests on knowable facts and plausible assumptions.

    It starts with the significant number of Republicans in the Senate — possibly as many 20 — who think what’s going on is foolish and counterproductive. The White House is betting that enough GOP senators are prepared to make a deal along lines that President Obama has already put forward.

    Obama’s lieutenants argue that, while Republicans are aware that the president is seeking new revenue through tax reform, many did not fully grasp the extent to which he has offered significant long-term spending cuts. These include reductions in Medicare and a willingness (to the consternation of many Democrats) to alter the index that determines Social Security increases. Obama has proposed $930 billion in cuts to get $580 billion in revenues.

    .....

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-dionne-a-way-out-of-our-budget-wars/2013/03/06/4808b780-86a3-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394_story.html?hpid=z6Hope

    To which all I can think to say is:

    1. This is hope?

    2. JFC, are we going back to this again?


    by AmericanDreamer on Thu, 03/07/2013 - 10:59am