The Ivory Coast strongman is forced to bow to the inevitable four months after losing elections There was to be no suicide pill, no bullet in the brain, no heroic martyrdom. Instead, it is claimed, there was a humiliating slap on the cheek. Laurent Gbagbo came blinking into the sunlight on Monday with the look of an actor hearing his applause turn to jeers. The fall of the African strongman came after one of the most drawn-out election results in history. Gbagbo was forced to bow to the inevitable and leave his power base in Ivory Coast four months after the votes were cast against him. Backed by French tanks, forces loyal to Gbagbo’s arch rival, Alassane Ouattara, said they stormed his underground bunker at the presidential residence in Abidjan, interrogating Gbagbo then carrying him away with his wife Simone and son Michel. “We attacked and forced in a part of the bunker,” Issard Soumahro, a pro-Ouattara soldier at the scene, told the Associated Press. “He was there with his wife and his son. He wasn’t hurt, but he was tired and his cheek was swollen from where a soldier had slapped him.” The 65-year-old former history professor, who once dismissed the beheading of France’s Louis XVI as public “ebullience”, could be seen wearing a military flak jacket and was flanked by two soldiers. His son, Michel, was beaten and bleeding, according to an Ouattara spokesman. Gbagbo was then reportedly taken to meet his nemesis at the city’s Golf hotel, where Ouattara’s government-in-waiting has been encamped under UN protection since Gbagbo’s intransigence plunged the country back into civil war. The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, hailed the decisive blow, saying that dictators should take notice that “they may not disregard the voice of their own people in free and fair elections.” The British foreign secretary, William Hague, called for Gbagbo to be treated with respect and tried in an orderly manner. After months of diplomatic stalemate and two weeks of military defiance, it took one last big push to force Gbagbo out of his bunker. And it was clear that foreign intervention had played a decisive role in breaking the deadlock. On Sunday night, French and UN helicopter gunships pounded Gbagbo’s residence for the second time, claiming they were taking out heavy weapons that had been used against both the UN and civilians. Then on Monday morning a convoy of 25 French military vehicles, including tanks and armoured personnel carriers, set off in the same direction. But Ouattara’s forces claimed they carried out the final offensive alone. Gbagbo’s camp claimed he was taken by French special forces. The French, repeatedly accused by Gbagbo of plotting a coup in their former colony, vehemently denied this. Major Frederic Daguillon, a French military spokesman, insisted they were responding to attacks against civilians. “We deployed along the strategic axis,” he said. “One of these was a road that led to the presence of Mr Gbagbo. “Mr Gbagbo was arrested by the Ivorian forces. Not one French soldier was in the residence of Mr Gbagbo. Mr Gbagbo was arrested by Ivorian forces, not French.” What happens next to Gbagbo, once a firebrand Marxist lecturer, is not yet clear. Officials at the Golf hotel were said to be waiting for him to sign a document that formally hands power over to Ouattara. TV footage showed Gbagbo in a white sleeveless undershirt, and then donning a colourful print shirt. Apollinaire Yapi, a spokesman for Ouattara’s military commander Guillaume Soro, said: “He’ll stay at the Golf hotel for now, and will be handed over to the UN or French, but his ultimate destination is justice.” The international criminal court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has begun preliminary examination of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ivory Coast, including accusations levelled against pro-Ouattara forces. On Monday night there were celebrations in pro-Ouattara neighbourhoods where people shot into the air. But in other areas French troops were stoned by angry pro-Gbagbo youths. It remained unclear whether, denied their martyr, Gbagbo’s supporters would launch a backlash or melt back into the population. He won 46% of the vote in the election. With youth militias still roaming, the potential for chaos and a counter-insurgency is evident. But Youssoufou Bamba, Ivory Coast’s ambassador to the UN, predicted the fighting would stop. “The nightmare is over for the people of Ivory Coast,” he said. In western Ivory Coast, rebels fired into the air in jubilation in Duekoue, causing a panic among refugees who fled in all directions or dropped to the ground in terror. In villages going east from Duekoue people danced in the streets, waving tree branches. In one village, young men paraded with the orange, white and green Ivorian flag. “It’s a victory … considering all the evil that Laurent Gbagbo inflicted on Ivory Coast,” Ouattara’s ambassador to France, Ali Coulibaly, told France-Info radio. He emphasised that the man in power for a decade would be “treated with humanity”. Coulibaly added: “We must not in any way make a royal gift to Laurent Gbagbo in making him a martyr. He must be alive and he must answer for the crimes against humanity that he committed.” The power struggle in Ivory Coast has cost an estimated 1,500 lives, though the real figure is probably much higher, and displaced a million people from Abidjan alone. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, said: “This is an end of a chapter that should never have been. We have to help them to restore stability, rule of law, and address all humanitarian and security issues.” He said Gbagbo’s “physical safety should be ensured and I’m going to urge that”. Daniel Bekely, the Africa director of Human Rights Watch, said: “Laurent Gbagbo has been credibly implicated in crimes against humanity and other atrocities for which he should be held to account. He should not be granted a golden exile in a country that would shield him from national or international prosecution.” Laurent Gbagbo Ivory Coast Alassane Ouattara David Smith guardian.co.uk
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Mittens is in! Shep Smith reminds his FOX audience that Mitt is a Mormon who implemented his own version of health care. Mitt Romney is running for President. Whooo. … You know Mitt Romney, he was up there in Massachusetts, he started the Massachusetts health care plan that everybody’s attacking him for now because the rest of the country has one so much like it. He’s had a hard time with that. He’s Mormon, so that’s going to be an issue, just like religion always gets in the way of something . Wow, I forgot Mitt was a Mormon. How awesome is he? Romney uses Youtube to show us how hip he is with all that newfangled stuff. Mitt Romney has thrown his hat in the ring with a YouTube video announcing the formation of an exploratory committee for a 2012 presidential bid. And he’s so fresh that he’s using an old John Kerry bus tour slogan. Politico also noted, via email from a Democrat, that Romney’s slogan, “Believe in America” was actually the name of John Kerry’s August 2004 bus tou r. Think Progress even posted a photo of the Kerry bus on Twitter. enlarge Credit: Think Progress Romney-Kerry same slogan RomneyCare turns five and that’s something the Tea Party can celebrate with the Dems. Five years ago tomorrow, Mitt Romney signed into law a health care reform package in Massachusetts that White House officials have credited as being an inspiration for President Obama’s health care law. It’s a date that Romney, who has distanced himself from the bill, is not likely to commemorate, but Democrats are celebrating for him. In Massachusetts, the state Democratic Party is holding a party Tuesday to mark the occasion, which will feature a “Thank You Mitt Romney” cake. Meanwhile, in neighboring New Hampshire, Democratic officials are urging supporters to sign e-mail petitions and post messages to Romney on Twitter to “thank him” for his leadership on health care.
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NPR's Cokie Roberts hinted congressional Republicans were going to resort to extreme tactics regarding the debt ceiling on Monday's Morning Edition. Roberts noted the “rough votes” on the horizon in Congress, specifying the “debt ceiling that has to be increased, where Republicans have promised Armageddon.” Host Renee Montagne brought on the journalist to talk mainly about the recent proposed agreement on the budget between the Democrats and Republicans. Near the end of the segment , however, Montagne raised the other budget-related battles that are expected later in the year. Roberts dropped the biblical reference in her answer: MONTAGNE: So, Cokie, what now? Is there a way to avoid these dramatic countdowns to crisis in the future? I mean, there's some pretty, big dramatic issues coming up . ROBERTS: True. Of course, we got to this crisis because the Democrats failed to fund the government when they were supposed to last year, because they didn't want to take those votes before an election. Rough votes coming up now: a debt ceiling that has to be increased, where Republicans have promised Armageddon , and the 2012 budget, which will be voted on in the House this week. Earlier, the host asked about the federal funding of Planned Parenthood, which was one of the main controversies in the recent fight over the budget. Unsurprisingly, the NPR analyst parroted some of the left's talking points on the issue: MONTAGNE: …The White House noted that the President was standing firm on money for Planned Parenthood. Why did that become such a big issue? ROBERTS: Well, the President was thinking about independent voters, especially suburban independent voters who tend to support organizations like Planned Parenthood . Republicans are trying to cut off funding because they say they use the non-federal dollars for abortions and the Republicans are against abortions. But the President, even as he was saying that he was bringing people together, and he was the grown up, as he put it, in this fight, he was hanging tough on something and it was on that question of funding Planned Parenthood , where the White House told reporters that when Speaker Boehner pushed for cutting money for Planned Parenthood, the President just said no. — Matthew Balan is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here .
Continue reading …At Oakland Coliseum, People Stand All Night In The Cold To Get Free Medical Care
April 11, 2011 No CommentRemote Area Medical is shown at a free clinic in Kentucky back in 2008. It’s really strange, being trapped in this American nightmare without end. People who once had happy, productive lives are standing in the cold all night to see a desperately-needed free dentist, the Republican House majority leader thinks sick old people should learn to weave straw into gold , and the Democratic president is patting himself on the back for how politically clever he is to broker the deep, painful cuts to be inflicted on services to the needy. Not only that, he plans to announce more of them this week! What is wrong with this picture? By the time the free health clinic at the Oakland Coliseum opened Saturday at dawn, some 800 tickets had been handed out to people who waited in the cold all night for the chance to have a tooth extracted, get new glasses or to finally get prescription medications for arthritis or other painful conditions. Geneva Clay, 51, of San Leandro worked as a project manager and had health benefits before she was laid off in 2009. She had been waiting in line since 11 p.m. Friday and was number 282. “We are the middle class. We are in need of health care because of the lack of jobs,” she said, trying to keep warm until her number was called. “In this country, we shouldn’t have to fight for medical coverage, we shouldn’t have to fight to see a doctor. We can send money all over the world, but we can’t take care of our own.” Clay was one of about 1,000 people expected to be seen on the first day of the huge, four-day health clinic organized by Remote Area Medical. RAM, a volunteer medical corps based in Tennessee, has been providing health clinics in underserved areas around the world since 1985 and has been offering them in this country since the mid-’90s.
Continue reading …At Oakland Coliseum, People Stand All Night In The Cold To Get Free Medical Care
April 11, 2011 No CommentRemote Area Medical is shown at a free clinic in Kentucky back in 2008. It’s really strange, being trapped in this American nightmare without end. People who once had happy, productive lives are standing in the cold all night to see a desperately-needed free dentist, the Republican House majority leader thinks sick old people should learn to weave straw into gold , and the Democratic president is patting himself on the back for how politically clever he is to broker the deep, painful cuts to be inflicted on services to the needy. Not only that, he plans to announce more of them this week! What is wrong with this picture? By the time the free health clinic at the Oakland Coliseum opened Saturday at dawn, some 800 tickets had been handed out to people who waited in the cold all night for the chance to have a tooth extracted, get new glasses or to finally get prescription medications for arthritis or other painful conditions. Geneva Clay, 51, of San Leandro worked as a project manager and had health benefits before she was laid off in 2009. She had been waiting in line since 11 p.m. Friday and was number 282. “We are the middle class. We are in need of health care because of the lack of jobs,” she said, trying to keep warm until her number was called. “In this country, we shouldn’t have to fight for medical coverage, we shouldn’t have to fight to see a doctor. We can send money all over the world, but we can’t take care of our own.” Clay was one of about 1,000 people expected to be seen on the first day of the huge, four-day health clinic organized by Remote Area Medical. RAM, a volunteer medical corps based in Tennessee, has been providing health clinics in underserved areas around the world since 1985 and has been offering them in this country since the mid-’90s.
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Muslims take to the streets of Paris in protest at new French law banning the wearing of niqabs and burqas in public Kenza Drider stood defiantly outside Notre Dame, adjusting her niqab to reveal only a glimpse of her eyes. Scores of police with a riot van and several lorries stood by as she and another woman in a niqab staged a peaceful protest for the right “to dress as they please”. On the first day of France’s ban on full Islamic face-coverings, this was the first test. “I’m not here to provoke, but to defend my civil liberties as a French citizen,” said Drider, a 32-year-old mother-of-four from Avignon, accompanied by around 10 supporters. Japanese tourists and Spanish schoolchildren fought their way through TV crews to get a picture of the spectacle. Then police swooped. Drider had not been stopped on her train journey into Paris. But as she spoke to journalists at Notre Dame, she was led off by plainclothes police and driven away along with two protest organisers. Next a woman in a niqab in her 40s from a Paris suburb was grabbed by a plain clothes officer, who gripped her tightly and frog-marchedher to another police bus. Officers said the women were not detained for their niqabs but because their protest had not been authorised. Under the law promoted by Nicolas Sarkozy, any Muslim woman wearing a face veil is now banned from all public places in France, including when walking down the street, taking a train, going to hospital or collecting her children from school. Women in niqabs will be effectively under house arrest, allowed only inside a place of worship or a private car, although they risk being stopped by traffic police if they drive. But several French police unions yesterday warned that the law was almost impossible to enforce and that they would not make it a priority to stop women in full veils walking down the street. Halima, a 53-year-old mother from Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, who wears a normal headscarf, was detained by police for standing silently with the niqab-wearers at Notre Dame. She said: “This is the first time I’ve ever protested over anything. I’m not in favour of the niqab, I don’t wear it myself. But it’s wrong for the government to ban women from dressing how they want. Islamophobia is on the rise in France. First it’s the niqab, then they’ll ban the jilbab, then it will be plain headscarves outlawed.” Rachid Nekkaz, aproperty developer and rights campaigner from the Paris suburbs, was detained outside the Elysée palace with a woman in a niqab. Nekkaz, who organised the Notre Dame protest, had offered to pay niqab wearers’ fines for breaking the law. He said police had not wanted to formally caution the woman for wearing a niqab. Women in face veils risk a €150 (£132) fine or citizenship lessons. Police cannot forcibly remove face coverings in the street but can order women to a police station to check their identity. The government estimates between 350 and 2,000 women cover their faces in France, out of a total Muslim population between four and six million. Some niqab-wearers – many of them French converts – vowed to continue going out and to take their cases to the European court of human rights if stopped by police. Others have moved abroad, while just one woman told French papers she had permanently removed her face covering. Another niqab wearer said women she knew would wear bird-flu-style medical face masks and say they were ill in order to get round the law against covering your face. Shop-owners said luxury fashion boutiques near the Champs Elysées were unlikely to call the police to detain female tourists in niqabs from the Gulf. This would create a two-tier system between rich tourists and poor French people, one trader complained. Emmanuel Roux from the police union, Syndicat des Commissaires de la Police Nationale, said the law would be “infinitely difficult to apply” and “infinitely little applied”. Sarkozy, whose polls are at record lows with next year’s presidential election looming, has been accused of stigmatising Muslims to boost his support among far-right voters. Since he declared in 2009 that the burqa was “not welcome in France”, women in all forms of veils and head coverings said verbal abuse against them had increased. Recently the interior minister, Claude Gueant, suggested the growing number of Muslims in France was a problem. Religious groups have likened current Islamophobia in France to anti-Jewish feeling before the second world war. France has a strict separation of church and state and banned headscarves and all religious symbols in schools in 2004. Samy Debah, head of the French Collective against Islamophobia, said: “The niqab law is a pretext to reduce the visibility of Muslims in public spaces. It exposes an old French colonial reflex, that “Arabs and blacks” only understand force and you can’t talk to them.” French burqa and niqab ban France Islam Europe Religion Women Angelique Chrisafis guardian.co.uk
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Eaves Housing accuses ministers of ‘ideological decision’ that ‘will reduce funding by 60% per victim’ A charity that pioneered specialist services for victims of sexual trafficking, providing refuge and therapeutic support for hundreds of abused and exploited women, faces an uncertain future after ministers withdrew its funding. Eaves Housing has accused ministers of taking an “ideological decision” after they awarded a £6m contract to run the Poppy Project services it has developed and provided over the past eight years to the Salvation Army. It said the decision marked a change in the way government supports care for victims of trafficking: “They were after a bare minimum service, not a specialist service.” The move came as it was announced that a woman who was a repeated victim of sex trafficking is to be paid substantial damages by the Home Office after it returned her to Moldova, despite the fact that she faced grave dangers there. The ‘”groundbreaking settlement was reached on the eve of a high court hearing for her claim against the Home Office for failing to take steps to protect her and for sending her back to Moldova despite substantial grounds to believe she was at risk from her traffickers. The woman was identified as a victim of sex trafficking by the Poppy Project after years of ill treatment. Abigail Stepnitz, national co-ordinator for the Poppy Project for Eaves Housing, said that, according to their calculations, the new contract would reduce funding by 60% per victim. This meant it would be impossible to offer anything more than a limited service to victims, many of whom need intensive psychological support, she said. “We are concerned for the women in our care. We really do not know how we are going to be able to offer appropriate care for these women.” A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice said Eaves Housing “had done a very good job” in recent years, but the Salvation Army had put in a stronger bid for the contract, which has been widened to provide support for trafficked men as well as women. “Eaves are upset and it’s not great for them, but it’s much better for victims of trafficking,” said the spokesperson. The MoJ said the Salvation Army – which will “gatekeep” the contract, handing out subcontracts to a range of partner organisations – would be able to offer a wider geographical spread of services. The Salvation Army, which states that one of its main charitable aims is “to reach people with the Christian gospel through evangelism”, said its religious underpinning was not a factor. “We are a faith-based organisation and we are motivated by our faith, but it’s really important that we provide holistic care for all those who come under the auspices of our care.” Eaves had pitched for the contract, worth £2m a year over three years, with a number of other organisations, including the Helen Bamber Foundation, which works with victims of torture. Denise Marshall, the chief executive of Eaves, sent back her MBE earlier this year in protest at government cuts to services, which she says will leave charities unable to provide adequate services for vulnerable women. The Home Office will pay “substantial damages” to the Moldovan woman, who cannot be named because she and her family are still at risk of retribution from her traffickers. She was kidnapped at the age of 14 and then continually trafficked and re-trafficked for forced prostitution in Italy, Turkey, Hungary, Romania, Israel and Britain until she was 21. She was arrested by police and immigration officers in a brothel in London in 2003, who charged her with possessing false documents, which had been provided by her traffickers. She was imprisoned for three months before being sent back to Moldova through a fast-track immigration process. Her trafficker was neither investigated nor arrested but was allowed to visit her in Holloway prison and Oakington detention centre, where he posed as her boyfriend, in order to intimidate her. The woman was found by her trafficker when she returned to Moldova and was forced back into prostitution. In 2007 she was arrested again in Britain and held at Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre, but was eventually referred to the Poppy Project. She has since been granted refugee status. Mrs Justice Cox, who approved the confidential settlement, said the woman had been the repeated victim of sex trafficking over a long period of time, during which she had suffered severe sexual degradation resulting in psychiatric injury. She remained at significant risk of serious harm because the police had not been able to catch her traffickers. Poppy Project supports women who have been trafficked from places including Eastern Europe, Africa and Thailand to work in prostitution, and provides them with a range of intensive support services, including a safe house, a subsistence allowance, clothing, health checks, counselling and English lessons. It also provides outreach advice services to women who do not qualify for refuge care. Studies have shown that trafficked women have frequently been subjected to physical and sexual assault, forced into sex acts, and kept in captivity by traffickers. Research carried out in 2006 by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that over half the trafficked women they interviewed within two weeks of arrival at a support project had experienced physical symptoms such as weight loss, and gynaelogical infections, while over 70% reported problems with longer term mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and suicidal feelings. The Poppy Project was held up as an exemplary project in a study by the analysts New Philanthropy Capital in a 2008 report. It said: “Many of the experts that NPC consulted felt it was important that trafficked women be given support from specialist, women-only organisations with a track record in working with victims of extreme sexual violence and therefore have a deep understanding of what women need.” Charities Communities Voluntary sector Sexual health Health Human trafficking UK criminal justice Feminism Moldova Women Patrick Butler Alan Travis guardian.co.uk
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The explosion, which took place in the centre of the capital as commuters travelled home from work, injured up to 100 people A powerful blast has ripped through a metro station in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, killing at least 11 people and injuring up to 100. The explosion took place at the Oktyabrskaya station in the centre of the city just before 6pm on Monday as commuters travelled home from work. Video shot by witnesses on mobile phones showed survivors reeling across a smoke-filled platform where a woman with a damaged leg sat propped against a wall. In other images, a tide of frightened people rushed out through exit doors into an underpass as men with stretchers descended into the station. At street level, on Minsk’s Independence Avenue, emergency workers tended to more than a dozen seriously injured victims in shredded clothes, lying in pools of blood. Some had severed limbs. A young woman wailed “Mum, I’m alive! I’m alive!” into her telephone, while at least two corpses lay under a sheet of plastic. The Oktyabrskaya station is situated close to the residence of Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus. Lukashenko, a Soviet-style dictator, sent security forces to violently crush an opposition rally after disputed presidential elections in December. Several opposition candidates were arrested and are awaiting trial on charges of “organising mass public disturbances”. There is likely to be speculation that the blast will play into the hands of the hardline regime, who may use it as an excuse to crack down on the opposition. News agencies said that President Lukashenko visited the scene and laid flowers. “I can’t exclude that this gift was brought to us from outside, but we need to look at ourselves,” he told his defence minister, Yury Zhadobin, at an emergency government meeting.”You must check all the warehouses to see if ammunition and explosives are in place.” Lukashenko said the explosion could be connected to an unsolved incident in July 2008 when a bomb exploded in a park in Minsk, injuring about 50 people. “Maybe it’s a link in the same chain,” he said. Security sources said it was most likely a terrorist attack, but it was unclear who might have detonated the blast, which happened at rush hour at one of the city’s busiest transport hubs. There appeared to be no suicide bomber and Belarus has no history of confrontation with Islamists, like its larger neighbour, Russia. Witnesses described a scene of horror in the moments after the device went off. “It happened between the second and third carriages of the train on the Moscow line,” one man told reporters. “There were a lot of people covered in blood. I carried six young people out of there. I think there are fatalities.” Another man told Interfax: “I heard a muffled sound, like someone opening a champagne bottle, then the wave from the blast blew out the windows in the carriage. There was a great deal of smoke; we even became afraid that we might choke to death.” Some witnesses spoke of a crater on the platform, not far from an escalator. Belarus Global terrorism Europe Tom Parfitt guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Congressman Paul Ryan gave the Republican response to the President’s weekly address this weekend and I don’t have much to add that our own Nicole Belle didn’t already mention at C&L in her post on his Sunday show appearance on Meet the Press, but the Republican Party apparently wants us to take his budget proposal seriously enough that he was chosen to be their voice to respond to the President this week. So here we go with the same old “up is down, tax cuts create jobs, let’s destroy our social safety nets in order to save them and let’s send the have-mores some more money because god knows they all aren’t doing well enough already” business. Oh yeah — and the country is supposedly broke, unless you look at the hordes of cash the upper 1 percent are holding onto and not being taxed on. Ryan wants us all to be scared to death about this “crushing debt” we’re facing, but it’s funny he didn’t seem to have those same concerns when Bush was breaking the bank. Transcript via the LA Times : Hello. I’m Congressman Paul Ryan from Janesville, Wisconsin – and Chairman here at the House Budget Committee. It’s no secret our government has a spending problem –- and the problem has gotten so bad it’s threatening our future and hurting our nation’s ability to create jobs. Republicans made a pledge that we would work to change this if given the opportunity to lead. Since January, we’ve been urging President Obama to listen to the people and work with us to reduce spending. The president started this year by proposing a freeze that would make no cuts at all. But now bipartisan legislation is in sight to enact the largest spending cut in American history. This is good news for job creators in America –- but much more has to be done to put…. … our nation on a true path to prosperity. Earlier this week, the House Budget Committee advanced a new budget for the United States government that will move the debate in Washington from billions in spending cuts to trillions. We did so because it is unconscionable to leave the next generation with a crushing burden of debt and a nation in decline. Washington’s obsession with the next election has come at the expense of the next generation. We are calling this budget The Path to Prosperity, because it is more than just a budget. It is a commitment to honor the American legacy of leaving the next generation a more prosperous nation than the one we inherited. More prosperous — but only for that 1 percent. By removing the anchor of debt that weighs down our economy and advancing pro-growth tax reforms, this budget is a jobs budget. It sends signals to investors, entrepreneurs, and job creators that a brighter future is still possible – a future in which America is still an engine of growth that leads the world. Right now, that legacy is in grave danger. This nation is going deeper and deeper into debt -– and the spending choices we make today will determine the kind of lives our children enjoy tomorrow. The facts are these: Washington has not been telling you the truth about the magnitude of the problems we are facing. Unless we act soon, government spending on health and retirement programs will crowd out spending on everything else, including national security. It will literally take every cent of every federal tax dollar just to pay for these programs. The non-partisan experts have been clear about what this means: Each day that Congress fails to act, the government takes one step closer to breaking its promises to current retirees. Each year that policymakers kick this can down the road means trillions of dollars in empty promises are being made to future generations. If we stay on the current path, we are heading toward a debt-fueled economic crisis –- meaning massive tax increases, sudden cuts to vital programs, runaway inflation, or all three. Make no mistake: The prospect of a crisis is casting a shadow on economic activity in this country. Uncertainty is keeping job creators from hiring as fast as they should be. Businesses know that all this borrowing and spending today means higher taxes and lower incomes for their customers down the road. Economists agree: Advancing a credible solution to this crisis will begin to restore confidence and create better conditions for job-creation immediately. The President’s recent budget proposal is worse than just a commitment to this status quo. It would actually accelerate this country’s descent into a debt crisis. It would double the debt held by the public by the end of his term, and triple it in a decade from now. It would raise taxes by $1.5 trillion, even though the problem is that Washington spends too much, not that Americans are taxed too little. It would permanently enlarge the size of government by sending government spending as a share of the economy skyrocketing to levels that a healthy economy simply cannot sustain. And it offers no real reforms to save government health and retirement programs, and no leadership. Our budget is very different: Instead of locking in the spending spree of the last two years, our budget cuts $6.2 trillion in spending from the President’s budget over the next ten years. This keeps government spending as a share of the economy consistent with the historical average of 20 percent, so that individuals and the economy can be free. Instead of letting deficits spiral out of control, our budget keeps borrowing in check and puts us on the path to balance. Instead of adding $13 trillion to the debt over the next decade and trillions more in the years to come, this Path to Prosperity lifts this crushing burden of debt that is threatening our economy and our children’s future. It is not too late to fix America’s problems. It is not too late to get our country back on track so our kids can also realize the American Dream. We can – and we must – preserve this nation’s exceptional promise, because that is exactly what previous generations of Americans worked so hard to do for us. It is time for officials in Washington to stop acting like politicians, and to start acting like leaders. We have a legacy to fulfill. It is time for all of us to get to work, put an end to the empty promises and advance a plan to prosperity.
Continue reading …USA Today Religion Reporter Oddly Suggests Elderly Have No Powerful Lobby Group
April 11, 2011 No CommentClearly annoyed with conservative moves to cut the federal budget and, I suppose, with the success of conservative voters and the gun rights lobby, USA Today religion writer Cathy Lynn Grossman penned an odd entry entitled “Budget battles: Granny, get your gun,” excerpted in full below: Fresh from a budget showdown that pivoted on social policies for women's health/abortion (pick your language choice as per your point of view on this) Congress and President Obama are taking aim at entitlements .
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