If we continue current policies, federal expenditures outside of interest payments on the debt are projected to decline in the decade ahead as the economy recovers. In fact, these expenditures (which analysts call “primary outlays”) have already fallen from 23.9 percent of GDP in 2009 — at the bottom of the recession — to a projected 22.0 percent of GDP in the current year, 2012. They are projected to fall further, to 20 percent of GDP or lower in the latter part of this decade.
As mentioned last week, Rand Paul is coming to the Next Great University on Friday to talk about stuff.
The Junior Senator (and next Vice President of the United States of America) will be in the Whitehall Classroom Building, room 106. His talk starts at 4PM.
Whether you want to protest him, bear witness to his jellied hair or just listen quietly to the dude’s golden nuggets of wisdom, Rand Paul is your Senator and he’s there for you.
The good Occupy Lexington folks are planning to show up — it’s on facebook — so you can join them, or you can go by yourself. Or bring friends. It’s your call because we’re all free individuals.
Will Rand do synthetic drugs live on stage? Will he call for the destruction of statist taxpayer funded education? Will he complain about the handicap-accessible doors on the front of the Whitehall building? Will he lament the civil rights movement? Will he talk about Henry Clay? Will he find some way to bring up slavery?
So many Will He‘s but there’s only one way to find out.
Enter and grow in wisdom, Lexington. He’s your Senator and he speaks for you (and sometimes money).
The event is free and open to the public. Visitor parking is available in UK Parking Structure #5, with entrances on South Limestone and South Upper Street.
The Senate today will vote on an amendment to a highway bill which has nothing to do with highways and everything to do with the Republican Party’s continued war on women — a brilliant political move in a nation that’s 51% female.
The GOP’s nickname for this amendment is “the Conscience Clause” apparently because it excuses them for not having one.
The amendment, proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) in response to an Obama administration policy that helps provide contraception coverage for women, is supported by a wide range of Republicans and has become a popular target for Democrats. It also has put more moderate New England Republicans facing re-election, such as Sens. Scott Brown (Mass.) and Olympia Snowe (Maine), in a tough spot.
The proposal… says that health insurance plans and employers may refuse to provide or pay for coverage of “specific items or services” if the coverage would be “contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the sponsor, issuer or other entity offering the plan.”
Mr. Reid denounced the proposal, saying it “would allow any employer anywhere in our country to deny coverage for virtually any health service for virtually any reason.”
“I don’t know where we are going with this issue,” Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski told the Times, unaware that in the Grand Ol’ White Man’s Party there is nothing else more important than treating women like stupid, second class citizens.
If you’re still trying to figure out why the “no conscience clause” is attached to a highway bill, well, it’s because your dear old Senator, Mr. Mitch McConnell demanded it. HuffPo reports:
Reid said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) “insisted” on tying the amendment to the legislation if Democrats wanted to advance the bill, which Reid said is “extremely important” because it would save or create 1.8 million jobs.
“It’s hard to understand why my Republican colleagues think this topic deserves to be debated in the first place,” Reid told reporters. “Once we put this extreme, distracting proposal behind us, I’m hoping my Republican colleagues will stop living in the past and join us this year, 2012, and help us create jobs.”
Contraception is evil, no doubt, and this is expressly why the entire Left, the vast majority of the middle and lots of moderate Republicans want women to be able to have it. Because we’re all evil and it’s part of our evil plan to control the population or make women uppity or… wait… why are we doing this?
In the case of Sandra Fluke, who testified before Congress regarding the high cost of un-covered birth control, it’s because we are desperate to pay her to have sex. Because she’s a slut, right?
Rush Limbaugh, ladies and germs:
[If Rush wasn't enough for you -- or if you're dumb enough to believe that Rush's extremist views and hate speech are somehow not in line with the rest of the Right Wing media -- read on.]
Going back to our fair Senator, Mr. Mitch McConnell, he wrote an op-ed in the Herald the other day. It began:
Just when you thought you’d heard it all, you can peel back the pages of the Herald-Leader and gaze withastonishment at a columnist’s suggestion that the protections granted to people of faith under the FirstAmendment to the Constitution are akin to sharia law. Ironically, it’s a credit to the First Amendment’sprotection of free speech and a free press that such an outlandish suggestion can be made at all.
Goodness! Sharia law! That must have been a good column… let’s take a look:
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s vow to prolong the flap over insurance coverage of contraceptives raises a couple of questions:
■ How many people will buy McConnell’s warped notion of religious freedom?
■ How many will buy President Barack Obama’s warped notion that insurance companies give anyone anything for “free?”
Listening to McConnell, you get the impression that religious freedom is the freedom of believers to impose their values on other people.
So many terrifying words.
Let’s consider Mitch. He is casting stones. Bless his heart. He’s divorced. That’s a sin. And it’s not any old boring sin, it’s the sin of Adultery. That’s one of the Big Ones. It Is Written:
27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
31 “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
Ouch.
Religion’s a funny thing. People have different ways of viewing it, even people within the same church. Obviously tons of Catholics in the United States use — and believe in — birth control. Just as obvious, not everyone in America is taking a biblical view of divorce.
The American government isn’t forcing anyone to get on birth control. They’re saying that if a free person with certain unalienable rights seeks birth control as a personal decision (or, worse!, a personal decision made with their own G-d) then the corporation duly selected to provide them with health insurance can’t deny them their right to make up their own minds.
This is scary stuff — women thinking! — but it seems it is less an issue of religious institutions that provide health insurance having to give out birth control, and more an issue of all the women within these institutions who are desperate to have premarital sex and not get pregnant or sex with their husbands when they don’t want any more kids at that moment.
If these religious institutions were doing their jobs, no one in their flock would even want birth control.
If G-d is all knowing, and He is, then He’ll understand that the person writing the prescription, the insurance company paying for that prescription and the pharmacist filling that prescription, aren’t at fault for the woman’s decision to get that prescription.
Just as G-d will likely understand that in supporting the Iraq War, Mitch McConnell wasn’t necessarily condoning the killing of tens of thousands of innocent women and children.
Our G-d is an awesome G-d. He’s dealt with bigger problems than this and if it’s really such a big deal, it will be all those women on birth control who will ultimately have to pay the price.
And all those people who got divorced.
But sure, Republicans, keep it up. Keep up your war on women, keep calling women on birth control “sluts.” Keep on with your bad selves.
Asked while campaigning in battleground Ohio if he supported Blunt’s measure, Romney said in an interview with Ohio News Network, “I’m not for the bill.” Later, he issued a statement saying: “Of course I support the Blunt Amendment. I simply misunderstood the question.”
….A majority of Americans support the use of contraceptives. The public is generally in favor of mandating birth control coverage for employees of religiously-affiliated employers, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll February 8-13. The survey found that 61 percent favor the mandate, while 31 percent oppose it. Even Catholics, whose church strongly opposed the recent government mandate, support the requirement about as much as all Americans support it.
More broadly, GOP fractures on the issue could make it easier for Democrats to press birth control as a wedge; one poll found that even 50 percent of Republicans support Obama’s birth control coverage mandate. So keep an eye on GOP voting on this tomorrow. It’s key.
A United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection poll conducted Feb. 23-26 showed that 49 percent of adults polled support the Obama administration policy, while 40 percent oppose it. Among women, 53 percent backed the administration and 36 percent were against it.
Ron Paul Disavows White Supremacists, But Takes Their Money
….Paul’s 2012 campaign has received more than $6,000 from people who have identified themselves as white separatists or supremacists, or who are listed on anti-hate group sites such as the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Two prominent donors are leaders in what may be the most ambitious white nationalist political movement in the U.S., American Third Position. One is William Johnson, the group’s chairman. Another is Virginia Abernethy, a former Vanderbilt professor who is listed as a director of the party.
You are probably shocked that Ron Paul would take such money — or even garner the support of white supremacists (why do they like Ron?).
And on an even less related note, WFPL reports that Senator Rand Paul is firing up his campaign machine, sending an email to his supporters telling them to head out to the Republican Party precincting and reorganization process:
The Republican Party of Kentucky holds its reorganization every four years to coincide with presidential elections. During the process, party members elect individual precinct leaders and the head of the RPK.
In an e-mail to supporters, Rand Paul asks them to take part in the precinct elections and to get involved as county delegates to the state convention where the top leaders of RPK are chosen.
Cool idea, Rand. The RPK elections go down on March 31st (like the Dems) and from the Precinct elections come, eventually, the delegates to the national conventions.
While the Republican nomination race is focused on the ongoing battle between frontrunners Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, the Ron Paul campaign is waging an under-the-radar “delegate strategy” that could make the libertarian-leaning Texan the surprise kingmaker of the race.
In states that have already voted via a caucus system – rather than a straight primary ballot – Ron Paul supporters are conducting an intensively organised ground effort aimed at securing as many convention delegate slots as possible, often in numbers that far outweigh the number of actual votes that Paul got in the ballot.
If successful, it means Paul’s campaign could arrive at the August Tampa convention at the head of an army of delegates far larger than the proportion of votes that it won during the nomination contest.
It could also increase the chances of a contested convention – where no candidate has enough delegates to declare the winner – as well as give Paul much greater ability to inject his beliefs into the Republicans’ 2012 policy platform.
The strategy is based on the fact the GOP race is in fact a “delegate contest” despite an overwhelming focus by the media and most campaigns on “winning” individual states by coming top of the popular vote. But in reality, each state, weighted proportionally by population, sends a number of delegates to Tampa where a nominee is then chosen.
Garland Barr the Fourth is getting his campaign together and he’s gonna have his driver take him on a little tour. Alessi reports:
Barr said he’s still working on the schedule of campaign stops that will take him through the seven new counties to the 6th District — Bath, Menifee, Nicholas, Robertson, Wolfe and Fleming counties and part of Harrison County — as well as Clark, Montgomery, Powell and Estill counties. Those last four remain in the 6th District after the once-a-decade reapportionment process to make sure the populations of the districts are even.
Alessi also gets Garland on the record with his various economic views which once again demonstrates his problem — as a Tea Panderer he kinda understands what he’s supposed to say but he also kinda understands that it doesn’t all make sense, thus, Garland gets confused.
So we won’t be able to spend money on government projects if we’re in debt. But spending money on infrastructure is good. But taxes should be lowered. But government spending itself is bad. And raising government revenues is bad. Even though debt is also bad. Because it limits government spending on infrastructure.
If you can decipher Garland’s positions, then you can also decipher this… (it’s Not Safe For Work, folks, so David Williams: close the door.)
The decision by House Republican leaders to give in on the payroll tax rather than raise taxes on the middle class put Mitch McConnell in an awkward position, straining his relationship with Boner and setting a course into the months ahead in which John is stuck between his more establishment leadership, his insurgent freshmen Tea Partiers and the haughty Senate Republicans who’d prefer to boss the House around than listen to the true conservative patriots. And Mitch has to work with that.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) publicly distanced himself from House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Tuesday, the latest twist in a relationship put to the test in recent weeks.
McConnell declined to endorse a proposal announced by Boehner on Monday to extend the payroll tax holiday without paying for it.
Senate approves payroll tax cut in 60-36 vote after GOP gives up filibuster
The Senate voted 60-36 Friday to extend the payroll tax holiday and unemployment benefits after Senate leaders agreed to lower the threshold for passing the legislation.
Fourteen Republicans voted for the legislation, including Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who said just last week the cost of the payroll tax holiday extension should be offset.
McConnell risks political capital to show solidarity with Boehner in payroll fight
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) risked some political capital last week to make a high-profile show of solidarity with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), allaying scrutiny of their relationship.
McConnell split with his entire leadership team and most of the Senate GOP conference to vote for a 10-month extension of the payroll tax holiday, despite his own deep misgivings.
Tensions burst into view last week as Congress closed the book on extending a payroll-tax cut. With the GOP in the House and Senate at odds over the matter, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was publicly frustrated—uncharacteristic for him—while House Speaker John Boehner was dismissive of Senate Republicans.
Lower-ranking lawmakers were blunter. “I don’t know if the Senate could find the House of Representatives on a Google map,” said Rep. Cory Gardner of Colorado, a freshman Republican.
The split, if unresolved, threatens to spill over into other legislation, including a multibillion-dollar highway bill and the Republican budget proposal.
President Obama and his fascist communistic national socialist Islamist imperial brownshirt government thugs are ramming rural development down our throats.
This is a perfect example of this president’s radical ideology and it’s no wonder so many in Frankfort want him off our backs.
We Can’t Wait: Obama Administration Announces Steps to Boost the Rural Economy, Promote Job Creation
WASHINGTON, DC – As part of the Obama Administration’s “We Can’t Wait” efforts to strengthen the economy, create jobs and support business growth, Administration officials announced three significant actions to expand the government’s purchase of biobased products, promote regional rural job creation efforts, and develop a rural healthcare workforce, all of which build on the historic investments the Administration has made in rural America over the past three years. Today’s announcements are the latest in a series of executive actions the Obama Administration is taking to strengthen the economy and move the country forward because we can’t wait for Congress to act.
“My Administration is committed to using every tool available to promote economic growth and create good jobs in rural America,” said President Obama. “Today’s announcements reflect our continued focus on expanding opportunity for rural Americans and all Americans, including supporting new and innovative businesses, and improving rural health care and education. And the actions we’re taking today are possible thanks to the feedback and ideas I’ve received from hardworking Americans across rural America, including the participants at the White House Rural Economic Forum.”
Fascism.
Here’s a closer look at the specific ideas of where this President is taking our country to:
New initiatives being announced today include:
• Promoting A Bioeconomy: President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum today directing the Federal Government to take decisive steps to dramatically increase the purchase of biobased products over the next two years, which will create jobs and drive innovation where biobased products are grown and manufactured. The Memorandum will also result in a 50 percent increase in the number of new products that are designated as biobased. Biobased products include items like paints, soaps and detergents and are developed from farm grown plants, rather than chemicals or petroleum bases. The biobased products sector marries the two most important economic engines for rural America: agriculture and manufacturing.
• Rural Jobs Accelerator: The Rural Jobs Accelerator is a national competition that will provide about $15 million for projects that promote innovation-fueled regional job creation. The competition will combine funding from the USDA, the Economic Development Administration (EDA), Delta Regional Authority and the Appalachian Regional Commission. Additionally, this approach will require multiple agencies to coordinate technical assistance and grant / loan programs so that potential rural customers have a single access point within the Federal government to mobilize the resources of the government to help a region of the country. USDA will utilize the Rural Community Development Initiative (RCDI) program to support this effort and provide technical assistance and training funds to qualified intermediary organizations to develop their capacity to undertake housing, community facilities, and community and economic development projects in rural areas. The Federal Funding Opportunity will be released in the next few weeks.
• Rural Health IT Workforce: The Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Labor signed a memorandum of understanding to connect community colleges and technical colleges that support rural communities with the materials and resources they need to support the training of Health Information Technology (HIT) professionals that work in rural hospitals and clinics. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the needed HIT workforce will increase by 20 percent by 2016.
Over the last month, the Obama Administration has made several additional announcements resulting from the White House Rural Council’s efforts, including an initiative to help rural homeowners refinance their mortgages at lower interest rates and a new forest restoration framework to drive economic growth and job creation through timber restoration and harvest. The new plan would place federal agencies on a path toward increasing federal timber harvests to 3 billion board feet.
Sen. Rand Paul recently made news for putting a legislative hold on a bipartisan bill to ban a chemical used in synthetic drugs. He initially said the hold was due to his belief that this matter should be settled at the local and state level. Considering Rand Paul feels this way on 99 percent of all issues (except the constitutional amendment for the federal government to regulate the uterus and doctor visits of women, of course), this isn’t really surprising.
Paul also claimed a reason behind his hold is that banning the chemical would prevent it from being used in research. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley says this claim is false.
So Paul has one philosophical reason for opposition, and one other reason where the factual basis is contested but would have some merit if it was true.
Of course, what’s missing from Paul’s argument is some completely insane, conspiratorial reason for blocking this legislation.
All this on the very same day we get this exciting photograph from our friends in the communist ivy tower of our increasingly privatized statist university:
Sen. Rand Paul will deliver a public talk March 2 at the University of Kentucky, titled “A Year in the Senate: Discussion and Reflections.”
Paul’s talk will take place at 4 p.m. Friday, March 2, in Room 106 of the White Hall Classroom Building on UK’s central campus.
Paul, a Bowling Green ophthalmologist and son of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, of Texas, was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Republican in 2010, succeeding Sen. Jim Bunning. He has Senate committee assignments in energy and natural resources; health, education, labor and pensions; homeland security and governmental affairs; and small business and entrepreneurship.
The event is part of the Leaders in Public Policy Series, sponsored by the Martin School of Public Policy and Administration. Paul’s talk is co-sponsored by the Gatton College of Business and Economics’ BB&T Program.
It’s safe to say a those wacky college kids will do a bunch of synthetic drugs while it’s still kind of legal and head out to see the jelly-haired oracle of freedom.
Six Republican senators, including Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, formally filed an amendment on Monday to a highway funding bill that would approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
It is the latest move in an uphill battle by Republicans to advance TransCanada’s $7 billion project after President Barack Obama last month said it should be put on hold pending further environmental reviews of a new route for its Nebraska portion.
And to all your friends who are of differing views on the idea of the pipeline, you might want to point out to them that the “thousands of jobs” Republican leaders keep insisting the pipeline will create are actually… closer to twenty:
TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL oil pipeline, heralded by supporters as a major job creator, will add few permanent positions once the $7 billion project is built.
The number of people needed to operate and maintain the 1,661-mile (2,673-kilometer) pipeline may be as few as 20, according to the U.S. State Department, or as many as a few hundred, according to TransCanada.
“I don’t see a big jobs impact,” Stephen Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, said in an interview. “It gets the oil into refineries that already exist. It’s like replacing a bridge on the highway.”
(And that’s a story from Bloomberg, BTW, not exactly a lefty granola site. You can point that out to them, too.)
While the pipeline remains held up (for now… did you sign that petition yet?), TransCanada’s doing okay with 4th Q revenues up 39%.
Mitch McConnell vowed over the weekend to turn the battle against Obama’s proposal into a crusade that won’t end until the White House backs down. But as Igor Volsky notes, two GOP Senators — Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins — have voiced cautious support for Obama’s compromise, breaking with the idea that it’s an assault on religious liberty.
Snowe: “It appears that changes have been made that provide women’s health services without compelling Catholic organizations in particular to violate the beliefs and tenets of their faith.”
Collins: “While I will carefully review the details of the president’s revised proposal, it appears to be a step in the right direction…The administration has finally listened to the concerns raised by many and appears to be seeking to avoid the threat to religious liberties posed by its original plan.”
SHE WON'T GO!
KentuckyElection.org
BONNIE PRINCE BILLY
