Fund downgrades forecast on UK economy for third time in a year in report that suggests rising unemployment and social unrest The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has cut its 2011 growth forecast for the UK economy to 1.75%, its third downgrade in a year. The cut cements the widely held view that Britain faces a year of low growth and rising unemployment with little prospect of a job-creating recovery until later in 2012. It will increase the pressure on the chancellor, George Osborne, to boost Britain’s growth prospects. The Washington-based agency said on Monday in its half-yearly World Economic Outlook that its lower growth target, down from 2.1% last April, was the result of the UK’s “necessary” front-loaded fiscal consolidation which will dampen domestic demand. Officials at the IMF have immersed themselves in analysis of the financial crisis and the best way for countries to recover after failing to warn of the housing bubbles in the US, UK and other parts of Europe prior to the banking crash. In a broadly positive review of the global economy, which said that growth would be maintained, albeit at a slower pace, the IMF sounded several warning notes, not least that governments with half-hearted public spending cuts were undermining efforts towards longer-term sustainable growth. The report warns that the downside risks to UK growth have increased as the potential for policy mistakes in the eurozone have risen. The cost of oil and other raw materials, which have jumped 32% over the last year according to the IMF’s own index, also pose extra risks. It said further sovereign debt problems could hit confidence in the eurozone, which is likely to be read as a warning that failure to strike a deal over the Portugal bailout could be catastrophic for growth. The IMF backs further integration of policies and regulations inside the eurozone to prevent further arguments over fiscal rules and the extent to which individual countries can overspend. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the organisation, has worked with the European commission in orchestrating the bailouts of Ireland and Greece, with the IMF putting up a large proportion of the loans for each country. It is expected the IMF will be back in action once a deal is hammered out by EU finance ministers on the terms of Portugal’s sovereign debt refinancing. Strauss-Kahn, who is considering running for the socialist nomination for the French presidency when Nicolas Sarkozy’s first term ends next year, is concerned that cuts in public spending have been pursued at the expense of initiatives to improve growth and create jobs. Several times in the report the IMF says the likelihood is that the UK and other developed countries will see rising unemployment this year with the potential for social unrest increasing. Developing nations, which have huge numbers of young people, will also be badly affected. “Unemployment poses grave economic and social challenges, which are being amplified in emerging and developing economies by high food prices,” it says. “The young face particular difficulties. Historically, for Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries the unemployment rate for young people aged 15 to 24 has been about two and a half times the rate for other groups. “Though youth unemployment typically increases sharply during recessions, the increase this time was greater than in the past: in a set of eight countries for which long time-series of youth unemployment are available, the increase averaged 6.5 percentage points during the great recession, compared with four percentage points in previous recessions,” it says. Unemployment among Britain ‘s 16-to-25-year-olds was 974,000 last month and is expected to exceed the politically sensitive 1 million mark on Wednesday when official figures are published. IMF Economics Financial crisis Global economy Banking Global recession Phillip Inman guardian.co.uk
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News International chief clarifies 2003 statement that ‘we have paid the police for information in the past’ Read Rebekah Brooks’ letter to MPs in full The former Sun editor, Rebekah Brooks, told a powerful group of MPs on Monday she has no knowledge of any actual payments the paper might have made to police offers in exchange for information. In a letter to the chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee, Brooks, who is now chief executive of the paper’s parent company News International, said she had no “knowledge of any specific cases” in which payments to police might have been made. Brooks was responding to a request from the committee made last month to detail how many police officers received money from the Sun, which she edited from 2003 to 2009, and when the practice ceased. Brooks, who edited the Sun’s sister title the News of the World before moving to the daily in early 2003, told MPs on the culture, media and sport select committee eight years ago :”We have paid the police for information in the past.” In her letter to the home affairs select committee chairman, Labour MP Keith Vaz, Brooks said she was grateful for the opportunity to clarify the evidence she gave in March 2003. She added that she was talking in general terms about the newspaper industry and its relationship with the police, rather than the paper she edited specifically, when she appeared before the culture media and sport committee in 2003. “As can be seen from the transcript, I was responding to a specific line of questioning on how newspapers get information,” Brooks wrote. “My intention was simply to comment generally on the widely-held belief that payments had been made in the past to police officers. “If, in doing so, I gave the impression that I had knowledge of any specific cases, I can assure you that this was not my intention.” Vaz wrote to Brooks at the end of last month following evidence given to the home affairs select committee in March by John Yates, the acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police, in which he said Scotland Yard was undertaking “research” on whether police officers had received payments from newspapers. The Labour MP for Leicester East also wrote to Yates in March on behalf of the home affairs select committee asking for more details about this research. In the same evidence session Yates reiterated his claim that the Crown Prosecution Service had initially advised the Met to adopt a narrow interpretation of the law relating to phone hacking during its initial investigation into allegations of widespread hacking at the News of the World. He said that advice “permeated the whole investigation/inquiry” and helped explain why the police had only identified a small number of victims. The committee has asked Yates to supply a copy of the legal advice the Met received from the CPS when Yates reviewed the hacking evidence last autumn. Yates said its advice changed after a case conference held in October 2010, during which the CPS made it clear that a wider definition of what constitutes a hacking offence should be adopted. MPs have asked for copies of the legal advice supplied before and after that October meeting. A spokeswoman for Vaz said he had received a reply from Yates and the committee is likely to make it public in due course. The Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, contradicted Yates’s claims about the CPS advice when he appeared before the home affairs committee earlier this month. Starmer maintains the Met was not advised to adopt a narrow definition of hacking at any point. •
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MSNBC’s new slogan may be “Lean Forward,” but the brazenly left-wing cable network does a lot of looking back – to the 1860s. April 12, 2011, will mark the 150 th anniversary of the bombardment of Ft. Sumter in South Carolina – the beginning of the American Civil War. As Americans observe this milestone, they’ll hear a lot of words they only vaguely remember from U.S. History class – terms like “secession,” “states rights,” “nullification,” “contraband,” or “Dred Scott.” Not MSNBC viewers. To them the language of the Civil War is remarkably familiar, since the network’s liberal hosts and guests never miss an opportunity to associate today’s conservative movement with the Confederacy, secession, slavery and racism.
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Demonstrators dismiss peace mediators as Gaddafi allies and renew calls for Libyan leader to step down immediately An African Union (AU) peace mission has received a frosty welcome in Benghazi, the de facto capital of the Libyan opposition, as rebel supporters insisted that Muammar Gaddafi relinquish power. More than 1,000 demonstrators waved pre-Gaddafi flags and chanted slogans against the Libyan ruler outside a hotel in the city. They said they had little faith in the visiting mediators, who they said were mostly allies of Gaddafi who preached democracy for Libya but did not practise it at home. The African negotiators, led by the South African president, Jacob Zuma, met Gaddafi in Tripoli on Sunday and afterwards said he accepted their “roadmap” for a ceasefire . However, an Algerian representative of the delegation was vague on whether the proposal included a demand for Gaddafi to give up power and would only say that the option was discussed. The delegation, minus Zuma who left on Sunday night, arrived in Benghazi where protesters and the opposition leadership demanded that Gaddafi step down immediately. “On the issue of Gaddafi and his sons, there is no negotiation,” said Ahmed al-Adbor, a member of the opposition’s transitional ruling council. “The sons and the family of Gaddafi cannot participate in the political future of Libya,” he added. The meeting came hours after Nato air strikes hit Gaddafi’s tanks, helping the rebels push back government troops who had been advancing towards Benghazi. The AU’s peace draft calls for an immediate ceasefire, co-operation in opening channels for humanitarian aid and the start of a dialogue between rebels and the government. AU officials, however, made no mention of any requirement for Gaddafi to pull his troops out of cities as the rebels have demanded. Zuma called on Nato to end air strikes to “give the ceasefire a chance”, but prospects for the AU plan looked bleak, given the chasm over Gaddafi’s position. “The issue of Gaddafi stepping down from any political position is a closed issue … Muammar Gaddafi does not hold a position of power,” Abdel Monem al-Lamoushi, a government spokesman, told al-Arabiya television. “No one has the right to send Muammar Gaddafi into exile out of the land of his forefathers. This man will not leave Libya.” The AU does not have a good record in brokering peace deals, having failed to end conflicts or disputes in Somalia, Madagascar and Ivory Coast. Officials from Nato, which has been bombing Libyan government forces under a UN mandate to protect civilians, said they took note of the AU proposal but said the alliance would continue operations while civilians were at risk. The AU delegation, consisting of the presidents of South Africa, Congo-Brazzaville, Mali and Mauritania, plus Uganda’s foreign minister, landed at Tripoli’s Mitiga airport after Nato gave permission for their aircraft to enter Libyan airspace. The planes were the first to land in Tripoli since the international coalition imposed a no-fly zone over the country more than two weeks ago. Gaddafi later drove among the thousands of chanting supporters who gather daily at his compound to pledge their loyalty and act as a human shield against Nato air strikes. Gaddafi’s public appearances have become less frequent as the crisis has progressed. “It does not appear that this indication of a peace deal has any substance at this point,” said one Nato official in reference to the shelling of Misrata, which has been under siege for six weeks. Al-Jazeera television quoted a rebel spokesman as saying five people had died and 20 were wounded in Misrata, the sole rebel-held city in western Libya. Rebels in Misrata told Reuters that Gaddafi’s forces had fired Russian-made Grad rockets into the city, where conditions for civilians are said to be desperate. The UN’s children’s agency said at least 20 children had been killed and many more injured in Misrata, Libya’s third largest city, over the past three weeks. Unicef said children as young as nine months were among the victims and most were under 10. It said they died of shrapnel from mortars and tanks, and bullet wounds. Unicef, which warned that tens of thousands more children were at risk because of lack of food and clean water, said last week that children in Misrata were being targeted by snipers. Libya African Union Middle East Muammar Gaddafi Arab and Middle East unrest Jacob Zuma Mark Tran guardian.co.uk
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Capture by fighters loyal to Ouattara comes after more than 30 French armoured vehicles join advance on Abidjan residence Laurent Gbagbo, whose refusal to step down as president of Ivory Coast has plunged the country into violence, has been detained in Abidjan by opposition forces. News of his capture came after a column of more than 30 French armoured vehicles closed in on his residence in the city. A spokesman for Alassane Ouattara, who won last year’s presidential election, told the Guardian: “It’s true. Gbagbo has been taken to the Golf hotel by republican forces. Our forces went to the residence this morning and took him out.” Another Ouattara adviser, Mamado Touré, confirmed that Gbagbo was with his family at the hotel. Other news sources have reported that Gbagbo was handed over to the French by his own “presidential guard”. Although the precise details of the capture remain unclear, both the French ministry of defence and “diplomatic sources” are maintaining that it was Ouattara’s forces who captured Gbagbo. Earlier, however, France’s ambassador to Ivory Coast said Gbagbo had been detained by French special forces. Residents reported heavy fighting on Monday morning between forces loyal to Ouattara and those backing Gbagbo around Abidjan’s Cocody and Plateau districts, still controlled by Gbagbo loyalists. Hundreds of pro-Ouattara troops massed at a base camp just north of Abidjan, where a small bus arrived, filled with new Kalashnikov rifles still in their transparent blue wrappers. The French armoured vehicles, each carrying four to eight men, left their base in the south and headed towards central Abidjan early in the morning. “Armed and ready for combat,” the commanding officer ordered. The men cocked their weapons ready to fire as the vehicles rolled out of the base. “The operation is under way. I cannot give you more details. The aim is to ensure a bloodbath is averted,” said Frederick Daguillon, spokesman for the French force in Ivory Coast. France, the former colonial power in Ivory Coast which has more than 1,600 troops in the country, has taken a lead role in efforts to persuade Gbagbo to relinquish power, infuriating his supporters who accuse Paris of neo-colonialism. Gbagbo’s refusal to step down after Ouattara won November’s election, according to results certified by the UN, reignited a civil war that has claimed more than 1,000 lives and uprooted a million people. Ivory Coast Laurent Gbagbo Alassane Ouattara Kim Willsher Sam Jones guardian.co.uk
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enlarge What modern fashion stylist George Will thinks is appropriate daywear for men and women. Hey you youngsters, get out of my Gap store! On any American street, or in any airport or mall, you see the same sad tableau: A 10-year-old boy is walking with his father, whose development was evidently arrested when he was that age, judging by his clothes. Father and son are dressed identically — running shoes, T-shirts. And jeans, always jeans. If mother is there, she, too, is draped in denim. Writer Daniel Akst has noticed and has had a constructive conniption. He should be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has earned it by identifying an obnoxious misuse of freedom. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, he has denounced denim, summoning Americans to soul-searching and repentance about the plague of that ubiquitous fabric, which is symptomatic of deep disorders in the national psyche. enlarge That’s right…Levi Strauss is orchestrating the death of the American Empire. Horrors! How dare Americans look like the working class? We can’t all have Will’s upper crust, weekend-in-the-Hamptons look, but honestly, is it too much to ask that we try to class up the joint? This is not complicated. For men, sartorial good taste can be reduced to one rule: If Fred Astaire would not have worn it, don’t wear it. For women, substitute Grace Kelly. Edmund Burke — what he would have thought of the denimization of America can be inferred from his lament that the French Revolution assaulted “the decent drapery of life”; it is a straight line from the fall of the Bastille to the rise of denim — said: “To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.” Ours would be much more so if supposed grown-ups would heed St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, and St. Barack’s inaugural sermon to the Americans, by putting away childish things, starting with denim. Oh good gravy. Someone put Will out to pasture and put us out of our misery already.
Continue reading …Michelle Obama’s America: Chicago School Bans Bag Lunches to Protect Kids from Themselves
April 11, 2011 No Comment
The Chicago Tribune reported Monday that one Chicago public school — the Little Village Academy — has banned bag lunches…to protect the kids from their own “unhealthful” food choices: Principal Elsa Carmona said her intention is to protect students from their own unhealthful food choices. “Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school,” Carmona said. “It's about the nutrition and the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It's milk versus a Coke. But with allergies and any medical issue, of course, we would make an exception.” Carmona said she created the policy six years ago after watching students bring “bottles of soda and flaming hot chips” on field trips for their lunch. Although she would not name any other schools that employ such practices, she said it was fairly common. A Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman said she could not say how many schools prohibit packed lunches and that decision is left to the judgment of the principals. “While there is no formal policy, principals use common sense judgment based on their individual school environments,” Monique Bond wrote in an email. “In this case, this principal is encouraging the healthier choices and attempting to make an impact that extends beyond the classroom.” But reporters Monica Eng and Joel Hood suggest there are other reasons than a nutrition crusade: “Any school that bans homemade lunches also puts more money in the pockets of the district's food provider, Chartwells-Thompson. The federal government pays the district for each free or reduced-price lunch taken, and the caterer receives a set fee from the district per lunch.” But if they're really concerned about a learning environment, what if the kids don't eat? At Little Village, most students must take the meals served in the cafeteria or go hungry or both. During a recent visit to the school, dozens of students took the lunch but threw most of it in the garbage uneaten. Though CPS has improved the nutritional quality of its meals this year, it also has seen a drop-off in meal participation among students, many of whom say the food tastes bad. “Some of the kids don't like the food they give at our school for lunch or breakfast,” said Little Village parent Erica Martinez. “So it would be a good idea if they could bring their lunch so they could at least eat something.” “(My grandson) is really picky about what he eats,” said Anna Torrez, who was picking up the boy from school. “I think they should be able to bring their lunch. Other schools let them. But at this school, they don't.” But parent Miguel Medina said he thinks the “no home lunch policy” is a good one. “The school food is very healthy,” he said, “and when they bring the food from home, there is no control over the food.” At Claremont Academy Elementary School on the South Side, officials allow packed lunches but confiscate any snacks loaded with sugar or salt. (They often are returned after school.) Principal Rebecca Stinson said that though students may not like it, she has yet to hear a parent complain. “The kids may have money or earn money and (buy junk food) without their parents' knowledge,” Stinson said, adding that most parents expect that the school will look out for their children.
Continue reading …The army is on the Soviet occupiers’ path, with less success. What follows may be worse. All we can do, perhaps, is go Three years ago, in Helmand, I watched Nick Clegg present a battle plan to the British military. Unfortunately, it seems to be following it. The plan was a crayon and felt tip scrawl by one of his sons, who’d made his father promise to give it to the army. Handed over to amuse, it suggested that the baddies hidden beneath mountains could be fought by a few soldiers piling from a helicopter. We smiled at the juvenile simplicity. Now, in Helmand, the military are doing just this. They call their murderous night raids against insurgents a bold strategy for success, when really the intensification of violence is evidence of failure. We are, as David Miliband will warn in a speech on Wednesday, trapped in a war with no plan other than to kill as many baddies as we can before fleeing. At the end of my trip to Afghanistan with Clegg and Nick Harvey, now the armed forces minister, I wrote an overly optimistic piece suggesting that the army might be about to turn things around. Smart soldiers using jargon deployed PowerPoint charts to prove it. It seemed wrong not to take their confidence seriously, and allow them time to make their plans work. I did. More importantly, ministers did. They have had the time and the plans didn’t work. Almost everybody in politics thinks privately that military involvement in Afghanistan has been a disaster. The pity is few dare say so. Afghanistan is already yesterday’s war, though it is still to be tomorrow’s defeat. Mentally we have adjusted for the end, though there are still 9,500 British troops in action. Many soldiers and marines are on their fourth tour of duty – two years of a young adult life. Some face redundancy on return. We’ve been in Afghanistan for 10 years, and in Helmand for five – world wars were fought and won in less. It’s becoming one of those conflicts which seem to have no beginning and no end and probably no point, slipping from our enthusiasm and into history. Libya is eating up our energies instead. There was little interest last month when the foreign affairs committee published what (by its standards) was a strong criticism of the military surge. Perhaps some attention will be paid to Miliband’s speech. Of all politicians involved in pursuing the war he has been the bravest in speaking out. His intervention, as with his previous ones, is being made in America. That’s where decisions are being taken. Britain, having set 2015 as a date for withdrawal for no reason other than the proximity of an election, is ticking off the days on the walls of Camp Bastion like a prisoner scratching out a sentence. When General Petraeus leaves Afghanistan later this year he will of course claim to have broken the back of the insurgency, but what he has really done is scatter it across the country in response to ultra-violence. His predecessor, General McChrystal, promised to pacify 40 districts by last December and 40 more by the end of this year. It hasn’t happened. Talk of stabilising Kandahar has come to nothing – those mega-operations which were supposed to drive the Taliban out of their capital. In the north, Mazar-i-Sharif has rioted against the UN. In the south, we are indulging the fantasy that Lashkar Gah can move to Afghan control. Across the country, the coalition is more feared, violence higher and the president, Hamid Karzai, more unpopular than ever. Read Rodric Braithwaite’s magnificent new book Afgantsy to see where this will lead. His compassionate and brilliantly researched account of the Soviet experience in Afghanistan tells the story of an almost accidental invasion which collapsed not because of any single defeat but because the occupation became too expensive and incoherent to sustain. We are following the same path, and though Braithwaite is too discreet to make the comparison, the Soviet occupation was arguably more successful than ours. It ended in a negotiated settlement which might have lasted if the west hadn’t funded its ruin. The obvious thing to say – and when it’s obvious you have to ask if there is a problem with it – is that we must talk to the Taliban. Without that, we will leave a broken country. Our present strategy, says one official who has been at the heart of it, “is all a big, big lie”. Miliband will urge talks this week and of course he is right. But here’s the problem: what if no one answers? The Taliban have little incentive to reach a deal. A few hopeful signs – a half-recanting speech by the previously obstructive Hillary Clinton – does not yet amount to a process. In the meantime we are turning Afghanistan into a hyper-militarised state, funding a vast army and a security service which is becoming a government of its own. In the sham defence of democracy we will leave behind authoritarianism. It will no doubt last for a while after we go, as President Najibullah did after the Soviets. The Taliban will find they are not strong enough to rule Afghanistan. But nor is anyone else. If our present war is a calamity, what follows it will be worse. This is no way to end a column and no way to end a war, but maybe we will just have to shrug our shoulders and go. • Jon Snow chairs a Guardian and British Museum debate on Afghanistan at the British Museum tomorrow. Tickets at www.britishmuseum.org Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal David Petraeus Hamid Karzai Military Defence policy Middle East Julian Glover guardian.co.uk
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Mother of woman whose remains were discovered in a Gloucestershire field pays tribute to ‘beautiful, intelligent girl’ The mother of a woman whose remains were found in a farmer’s field in Gloucestershire has spoken of how her daughter’s murder has devastated her family. Karen Edwards told a police press conference relatives were horrified to receive news of Becky Godden-Edwards’ death on what would have been her 29th birthday. “After everything she has been through in her troubled life. Life was hard before when she was … an addict but we really did think she was alive and that one day she would come back home. Becky has now been found and the news of her horrific death has devastated all her family.” She said her daughter had fallen in with the wrong crowd when she was a teenager and had started taking drugs. “Becky was a very beautiful, intelligent girl … [she] gave me so much love and joy as a child. However, as a teenager she got involved with people who introduced her to drugs. She left school and her life spiralled into some very dark places to feed her addiction. She became a very, very different person.” Karen Edwards, who remarried when Becky was 15, said: “During her teenage years we did everything we could to help her overcome her drug addiction. We sought help from drug charities, doctors, we also asked for help from MP Julia Drown. We then put her into a private rehabilitation centre. “We tried everything to stop her leaving home but on every occasion the pull of her habit was much stronger and she would do whatever she needed to do to get her next fix. It was not unusual behaviour for Becky to disappear for weeks and months on end. When she was in serious trouble she always phoned her mum, and usually my husband, my sister or her brother or me would go and get her. We would bring her home only for her to disappear again.” In 2001 Becky moved out of the family home, in Swindon, after a conviction for burglary and theft. Her mother said: “She told me once that she loved me so much, she couldn’t keep putting me through this hell and she was leaving and she would not come back to me until she was clean. I never saw her again but I thought she was living in Bristol as she’d lived there before. “Over the years I have tried to find her through the police, the hospital and other organisations that trace missing persons but to no avail. I was told by sources close to the family, time and time again, that they had seen Becky during the missing years, so I had a strong belief that one day she would come back home. “I continued to buy her birthday cards, Christmas presents and cards, so that when she did come back home she knew I had been thinking of her every year since she left, hoping for one day that I would be able to give them to her.” Police discovered Becky’s remains in a field at a farm in Eastleach after the arrest of Christopher Halliwell, 47, a local minicab driver. He had been held by detectives investigating the disappearance of Sian O’Callaghan from outside a Swindon nightclub on 19 March. On 4 April, which would have been Becky’s birthday, detectives had to break the news to Karen Edwards that the remains were of her daughter, who she had not seen for more than eight years. She said: “Becky has now been found and the news of her horrific death has devastated her family. If anyone has any information, anything at all – no matter how small – that may help the police to establish when Becky was murdered or to fill in those missing years, we plead with you to come forward.” She thanked Gloucestshire police and wellwishers for their support, adding: “I’d also like to send our sincere condolences to the family of Sian. We know what they are going through.” Halliwell, also from Swindon, has been charged with the murder of 22-year-old O’Callaghan and is due to appear before Bristol crown court on 14 July. Crime guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, both of Politico, wrote Sunday that Speaker John Boehner's line to his conservative critics should be: “You are winning, and winning decisively. So stop your whining.” While the victors of some specific political battles of late may be in dispute, they write, “the broader trajectory of politics, stretching back to the spring of 2009, is not. The Republican — and, yes, the tea party — agenda is not only ascendant, it’s driving the debate over reshaping government at every level.” Check out a larger experpt below the break, and give us your thoughts in the comments. Jubilant top Republicans told POLITICO in interviews that they plan to use the momentum from the budget fight to take a hard line with President Barack Obama in the fiscal fights of the months ahead. And the GOP leaders said they believe their new advantage in the national debate will lift the party’s presidential candidates — none of whom right now looks capable of beating Obama. “The debate is now on our side of the field,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said from Sioux Falls. “This is just the opening act. But these upcoming debates are not going to be about whether we’re going to reduce the cost and size of government, but how much. That’s very good ground for Republicans to fight on.” Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and a 2012 presidential hopeful, told us: “When you see [Democratic governors] Jerry Brown [of California] and you see Andrew Cuomo [of New York] wrestling with spending, and inevitably wrestling with the unions who elect them, you know you’re in a different era.” Obama himself seems to be responding to the GOP's push, with his senior adviser David Plouffe announcing Sunday that the president will deliver a major speech Wednesday laying out a more aggressive path for deficit reduction — including reform of entitlements, particularly Medicare and Medicaid. Messaging is all well and good – the GOP seems to have a clear advantage rhetorically – but is that translating into significant policy gains? How do you measure the success of the conservative agenda? Is in synonymous with Republican success?
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