Republicans say they are confident a deal to raise the US debt ceiling can be reached as last-minute talks continue The White House and Republican leaders in Congress have made significant progress toward a deal to raise the US debt ceiling and avert a potentially catastrophic default, according to officials familiar with the talks. Under a plan negotiated late on Saturday night, the ceiling would be raised in two steps by about $2.4tn (£1.5tn) and spending would be cut by a slightly larger amount, the officials said. The first stage – to raise the ceiling by about $1tn – would take place immediately and the second later in the year. Congress would be required to vote on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, but none of the debt limit increase would be contingent on its approval. President Barack Obama is seeking legislation to raise the government’s $14.3tn debt limit by enough to tide the US treasury over until after the 2012 elections. He has threatened to veto any proposals that might lead to a recurrence of the current crisis next year but has agreed to Republican demands that deficits be cut – without tax increases – in exchange for authorising additional US borrowing. Without a compromise in place by Tuesday, administration officials say the treasury will run out of funds to pay the nation’s bills. The subsequent default, which would be the first in US history, could prove catastrophic for the US economy by causing interest rates to rise and financial markets to sink, and sending shockwaves around the world. With financial markets closed for the weekend, the parties to the negotiations had a little breathing space, but not much. Asian markets open for the new working week late Sunday afternoon Washington time. “There is very little time,” Obama said in his weekly radio and internet address on Saturday. He called for an end to political gamesmanship, saying: “The time for compromise on behalf of the American people is now.” One official commenting on the late night negotiations said the two sides had settled on general concepts, but that there were numerous details to be worked out – and no assurance of a final agreement. “There are many elements to be finalised,” Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate said. “There is still a distance to go.” Still, word of significant progress after weeks of stalemate offered the strongest indication yet that a default might be averted. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, said at a joint news conference with the House speaker John Boehner that he was confident a deal could be reached “in the very near future”. After a meeting at the White House with Obama and the House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, Reid initially disagreed with that optimistic assessment. Past increases in the US debt ceiling have been routine, but Republicans, citing the giant US deficit, have demanded huge spending cuts as a condition for approving the increase this time. After weeks of intense partisanship, there was renewed talk of compromise as both the House and Senate convened for extraordinary Saturday sessions. McConnell and Boehner held their news conference shortly after the House of Representatives had rejected a Senate Democratic bill drafted by Reid to raise the government’s debt limit by $2.4tn and cut spending by $2.2tn. The House vote was 246-173, mostly along party lines and after a bitter debate. The vote was unusual in that Republicans lined up to kill Reid’s legislation before it had even cleared the Senate. It was orchestrated as political payback because late on Friday Reid had engineered the demise of Republican proposals hours after it they were passed in the House. Before the House vote, Republicans said Reid’s proposals were full of gimmicks and would make unacceptable reductions in defence spending. Pelosi said Boehner had chosen “to go to the dark side” when he changed his own legislation to satisfy the Tea Party movement and other critics, who insist taxes must not be raised to cut into federal deficits, even for the wealthiest US companies and individuals. US politics United States US economy Economics Republicans Democrats Tea Party movement guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …ABC Sees Conservatives ‘Mounting an Unprecedented Assault on Environmental Regulations’
July 31, 2011 No Comment
Scores killed and wounded as President Bashar al-Assad’s troop launch assault on opposition stronghold ahead of Ramadan Syrian troops in tanks have stormed the flashpoint city of Hama, killing and wounding scores of people in a barrage of shelling and gunfire that left bodies scattered in the streets. Residents shouted “God is great!” and threw firebombs and stones at the tanks as they pushed through the city before dawn on Sunday. “It’s a massacre, they want to break Hama before the month of Ramadan,” an eyewitness who identified himself by his first name, Ahmed, told the Associated Press by telephone. Hospitals were overwhelmed with casualties and were seeking blood donations, he said. Activists have predicted that demonstrations will escalate during Ramadan, which starts on Monday, as protesters and government forces try to use the Muslim holy month to tip the balance of the uprising that began in March in their favour. Ahmed, a Hama resident, said he saw up to 12 people shot dead in the streets in a district known as the Baath neighbourhood. Most had been shot in the chest and head, he said. “Troops entered Hama at dawn today,” another resident told AP by telephone. “We woke up to this news, they are firing from their machine guns randomly and there are many casualties.” A doctor, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Reuters that the city’s Badr, al-Horani and Hikmeh hospitals had received 24 bodies. There were scores of wounded people and a shortage of blood for transfusions, he said by telephone from the city, which has a population of around 700,000. “Tanks are attacking from four directions. They are firing their heavy machine guns randomly and overrunning makeshift roadblocks erected by the inhabitants,” the doctor said. Machine gun fire could be heard in background as he spoke. “There are bodies uncollected in the streets,” said another resident, adding that army snipers had positioned themselves on the roofs of the state-owned electricity company and the main prison. Tank shells were falling at the rate of four a minute in and around northern Hama, residents said, and electricity and water supplies to the main neighbourhoods had been cut off – a tactic used regularly by the military when storming towns. During Ramadan, Muslims throng mosques for special night prayers after breaking their daily dawn-to-dusk fast. The gatherings could trigger major protests throughout the predominantly Sunni country and activists say authorities are moving to try to ensure that does not happen. An estimated 1,600 civilians have died in the crackdown on the largely peaceful protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime since the uprising began. Most of the dead were killed in shootings by security forces at anti-government rallies. Hama, about 130 miles (210 kilometres) north of Damascus, has become one of the hottest centres of the demonstrations. In early June, security forces shot dead 65 people there, and since then it has fallen out of government control, with protesters holding the streets and government forces ringing the city and conducting overnight raids. The city has a history of dissent against the Assad dynasty. In 1982, Assad’s late father, Hafez al-Assad, ordered his brother to quell a rebellion by Syrian members of the conservative Muslim Brotherhood movement. The city was sealed off before air strikes destroyed parts of the city. As many as 25,000 people, human rights groups say. The real number may never be known. Then, as now, reporters were not allowed to reach the area. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had compiled the names of 13 dead from hospitals and residents in Hama, but the figure could not be independently confirmed. The Syria-based Local Coordination Committees said it had the names of four victims, but thatthere were more bodies still to be identified. Syria Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Open Thread with The Professional Left Weekly Podcast: It gets better…for liberals?
July 30, 2011 No Comment
enlarge Credit: The Professional Left Time for your weekly podcast with our own Driftglass and Bluegal, otherwise known as The Professional Left. I always look forward to these as my weekly dose of sanity on Friday afternoons when they first come out. Mentioned in this episode: The World According to Chuck, Serenity. You can listen to all of their archives at http://professionalleft.blogspot.com/ and you can make a donation there if you’d like to help them keep these going. You can also follow them on Facebook at The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal . Enjoy the podcast and have a great weekend everyone. Open thread below…
Continue reading …FNC Cites MRC Study on Network Newscasts Blaming Republicans for Budget Stalemate
July 30, 2011 No Comment
enlarge Mortimer M. Caplin – Taxes and the man who collected them in 1962. Click here to view this media As all eyes and ears are on the state of the government and the current debit crisis, perhaps a little distraction in the form of Tax collection circa 1962 might be a good idea (or not). Mortimer Caplin was director of Internal Revenue under the JFK Administration and was given the somewhat onerous task of revamping what had become (even in 1962) an archaic and largely loophole-ridden institution. Caplin was the one who introduced Computer technology (however Neanderthal at the time) to the IRS and tried to get some uniformity to the tax code. See . .it’s not just 2011 – it’s forever. Here is Meet The Press from April 1, 1962 featuring Lawrence Spivak and the usual suspects interviewing Mortimer M. Caplin on the state of our Internal Revenue.
Continue reading …How The Versailles-On-The-Potomac Establishment Got Everything Wrong About The Deficit
July 30, 2011 No Comment
enlarge Do the lords and ladies of Versailles on the Potomac not have any trusted advisors? You know, the kind of people who can clue them in about the reality that Republicans really don’t care about the deficit, except as a handy tool with which to bludgeon Democratic presidents. (I suppose they also believe professional wrestling doesn’t use scripts.) Because really, their part in putting the stamp of approval on this debt ceiling fiasco is beyond absurd. The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait spells it out as he takes the Versailles establishment to task for pushing so long for President Obama to use the debt ceiling vote (granted, they didn’t have to push him very far, since he already supported the idea of a Grand Bargain) as an opportunity for Very Serious Deficit Reduction : The failure to understand the crisis we were entering was widely shared among centrist types. When Republicans first proposed tying a debt ceiling hike to a measure to reduce the deficit, President Obama instead proposed a traditional, clean debt ceiling hike. He found this position politically untenable for many reasons, one of them being that deficit scolds insisted that using the debt ceiling to force a fiscal adjustment was a terrific idea, and that connecting the deficit debate to a potentially cataclysmic financial event was the mark of seriousness . The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget argued: [F]ailing to use this debt ceiling ‘hammer’ to force serious fiscal reforms would be a dangerous lost opportunity. This country needs a deal to achieve $4 to $5 trillion in deficit reduction, and we need to put such a deal in place as quickly as possible. The Concord Coalition chimed in: [T]he need to raise the debt limit does provide an opportunity to assess past fiscal decisions and, if necessary, make corrections. In the past, major increases in the debt limit have often been accompanied by the enactment of deficit reduction plans such as the November 1990 increase of $915 billion, the August 1993 increase of $530 billion, and the August 1997 increase of $450 billion. In the absence of such linkage, Congress has been reluctant to raise the debt limit by more than is necessary to get through a short period of time. Thus, while the debt limit is not, by itself, a fiscal firewall, in the absence of other more effective mechanisms, it is one of the few budgetary speed bumps left to provide a sense of fiscal discipline . And the Washington Post editorial page repeatedly endorsed using the debt ceiling to force a deficit reduction. The operating assumption was that both parties required encouragement to act on reducing the deficit: [W]e retain some shred of hope that the bipartisan group of senators known as the Gang of Six will come forward with a productive contribution. The group is working off a blueprint produced by the fiscal commission that the president convened and then abandoned. Perhaps the fact that the other main alternative on the table is the considerably less centrist plan put forward by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will lure the White House into the fray. The political assumptions here turned out to be badly wrong. The main problem is that the Republican Party does not actually care very much about the deficit . It cares about, in order: Low taxes for high-income earners; reducing social spending, especially for the poor; protecting the defense budget; and low deficits . The Obama administration and many Democrats actually do care about the deficit and are willing to sacrifice their priorities in order to achieve it, a desire that was on full display during the health care reform debate. Republicans care about deficit reduction only to the extent that it can be undertaken without impeding upon other, higher priorities. Primarily “deficit reduction” is a framing device for their opposition to social spending , as opposed to a genuine belief that revenue and outlays ought to bear some relationship to each other.
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enlarge Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big believer in infrastructure, and I like it even more when infrastructure spending comes to my neck of the woods. This is especially true when the spending involves trains, and train crossings, and ways to make them safer for everyone. I’m not complaining. But still, I think it’s worth pointing out just how hypocritical these Republicans are. Elton Gallegly is crowing all over the press about his most recent “get”. VC Star : Metrolink spokesperson Sherita Coffelt said the railroad crossing at Spring Road near High Street will be upgraded to enhance safety for rail, vehicles, pedestrians and commercial property patrons. The improvements will include relocating a warning signal, installing a new one, and installing two vehicle exit gates, she said.”There will also be advanced reactions, which means that when a train is approaching, the warning lights will be coordinated with the traffic lights so that the traffic lights will never accidentally cause a car to get trapped on the tracks,” she said. Requested by Gallegly, the funding comes from the 2010 transportation/HUD appropriations bill as part of the Federal Railroad Administration’s High Speed Rail Corridor Improvements program , said Tom Pfeifer, spokesman for Gallegly’s Washington office. Yeah. That would be the high speed rail spending program Gallegly voted to kill , alongside his fellow suicide bombers in the House so we could pay for disaster assistance. But of course, that doesn’t stop him from dancing all over the place about what a great guy he is: Gallegly, R-Simi Valley, said he welcomed the funding. “Every day, Metrolink, Amtrak and Union Pacific trains cross major intersections in Ventura County cities,” he said in a statement. “This first-in-the-nation program that identifies and implements improvements to railroad crossings will reduce accidents and save lives.” Assistant City Manager Hugh Riley also welcomed the funding. “In this day and age, with things the way they are, if he (Gallegly) got some money for railroad crossing improvements out here, that’s terrific,” Riley said. “So this is great news.” I realize that this is just the hundred-zillionth example of Republican hypocrisy, but this one hits pretty close to home. About ten miles away. We’re an area that could really benefit from high-speed rail, too. So while Gallegly brings home the pork — er, earmarks — while claiming he’s a hard-core fiscal conservative, all I can do is laugh. Or cry. Or something. I just can’t wait until his seat is redistricted off the map. R-Simi Valley, indeed. The guy represents more than Simi Valley. Then again, he really doesn’t. We’re just unfortunate enough to be in his district anyway.
Continue reading …China rail crash families accept compensation as Beijing moves to silence furore
July 30, 2011 No Comment
Ten families agree to £87,000 compensation as death toll mounts Relatives bereaved by China’s high-speed rail crash have accepted compensation after the government doubled its original offer, as authorities tried to silence the furore over the disaster. Ten families have agreed to the deal – 915,000 yuan (£87,000) per victim – the state news agency reported. The death toll is now 40, with another 190 injured. Other relatives say the compensation is insufficient and that the ministry of railways, which has apologised for last weekend’s disaster, should take more responsibility. “Our deceased relatives were in the prime of their lives; they have children and senior parents to support,” said Chen Engfen. He said he would not accept less than £141,000. The crash, near Wenzhou in Zhejiang province, happened when one train ploughed into the back of another. Six coaches were derailed, with four plunging from a viaduct. Officials have blamed design flaws in signalling and are checking the equipment at 58 other stations. The disaster, and the government’s handling of it, unleashed an outpouring of anger. Many see the crash as epitomising the problems facing China in its headlong rush towards development, including the lack of transparency. However, unusually aggressive reporting has come to an abrupt halt. “Some newspapers have been told not to run articles, or had prepared far harder coverage but at the last minute had the rug pulled out from under them,” said David Bandurski of Hong Kong University’s China Media Project. China has seen a similar pattern in previous disasters, with censors shutting down discussion and relatives coming under pressure to sign compensation deals and stop raising questions about the incident. Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reported a relative as saying the family stopped protesting about the crash “because pressure was applied privately”. Chinese journalists have said that a television producer was disciplined after his programme asked searching questions about the crash. A note on Wang Qinglei’s microblog said that “as long as a country has journalists who resist pressure… it still has a soul”. China Rail transport Tania Branigan guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …China rail crash families accept compensation as Beijing moves to silence furore
July 30, 2011 No Comment
Ten families agree to £87,000 compensation as death toll mounts Relatives bereaved by China’s high-speed rail crash have accepted compensation after the government doubled its original offer, as authorities tried to silence the furore over the disaster. Ten families have agreed to the deal – 915,000 yuan (£87,000) per victim – the state news agency reported. The death toll is now 40, with another 190 injured. Other relatives say the compensation is insufficient and that the ministry of railways, which has apologised for last weekend’s disaster, should take more responsibility. “Our deceased relatives were in the prime of their lives; they have children and senior parents to support,” said Chen Engfen. He said he would not accept less than £141,000. The crash, near Wenzhou in Zhejiang province, happened when one train ploughed into the back of another. Six coaches were derailed, with four plunging from a viaduct. Officials have blamed design flaws in signalling and are checking the equipment at 58 other stations. The disaster, and the government’s handling of it, unleashed an outpouring of anger. Many see the crash as epitomising the problems facing China in its headlong rush towards development, including the lack of transparency. However, unusually aggressive reporting has come to an abrupt halt. “Some newspapers have been told not to run articles, or had prepared far harder coverage but at the last minute had the rug pulled out from under them,” said David Bandurski of Hong Kong University’s China Media Project. China has seen a similar pattern in previous disasters, with censors shutting down discussion and relatives coming under pressure to sign compensation deals and stop raising questions about the incident. Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reported a relative as saying the family stopped protesting about the crash “because pressure was applied privately”. Chinese journalists have said that a television producer was disciplined after his programme asked searching questions about the crash. A note on Wang Qinglei’s microblog said that “as long as a country has journalists who resist pressure… it still has a soul”. China Rail transport Tania Branigan guardian.co.uk
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