Sunday, March 22, 2009

In 2002, then Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill commissioned a study to back up his position on sustaining the tax rate and raising taxes in the future.

By the end of that year, both the report commissioned by O'Neill and the Treasury Secretary himself disappeared from any offical capacity. In the report the deficit was predicted to grow to $44 trillion. As Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill opposed tax cuts and demanded health care reform.

"...Of course to increase access to health care (click here), we must reduce the cost, both in dollars and preventable injuries and deaths. The government should commission a "Total Value Opportunity" study of the five best hospitals to see how close to perfection they can get, so that other institutions can measure their own performance against them...."

White House Shelved 44 Trillion Deficit Report? (click title to entry - thank you)
By Peronet Despeignes of the Financial Times
May 30, 2003, 10:21
Thursday 29 May 2003
Study commissioned by O’Neill sees $44 trillion in red ink
The Bush administration has shelved a report commissioned by the Treasury that shows the U.S. currently faces a future of chronic federal budget deficits totaling at least $44 trillion in current U.S. dollars.
The study, the most comprehensive assessment of how the U.S. government is at risk of being overwhelmed by the “baby boom” generation’s future healthcare and retirement costs, was commissioned by then-Treasury secretary Paul O’Neill.
But the Bush administration chose to keep the findings out of the annual budget report for fiscal year 2004, published in February, as the White House campaigned for a tax-cut package that critics claim will expand future deficits.
The study asserts that sharp tax increases, massive spending cuts or a painful mix of both are unavoidable if the U.S. is to meet benefit promises to future generations. It estimates that closing the gap would require the equivalent of an immediate and permanent 66 percent across-the-board income tax increase.
The study was being circulated as an independent working paper among Washington think-tanks as President George W. Bush on Wednesday signed into law a 10-year, $350 billion tax-cut package he welcomed as a victory for hard-working Americans and the economy.
The analysis was spearheaded by Kent Smetters, then-Treasury deputy assistant secretary for economic policy, and Jagdessh Gokhale, then a consultant to the Treasury. Mr. Gokhale, now an economist for the Cleveland Federal Reserve, said: “When we were conducting the study, my impression was that it was slated to appear [in the Budget]. At some point, the momentum builds and you think everything is a go, and then the decision came down that we weren’t part of the prospective budget.”
Mr. O’Neill, who was fired last December, refused to comment.
The study’s analysis of future deficits dwarfs previous estimates of the financial challenge facing Washington. It is roughly equivalent to 10 times the publicly held national debt, four years of U.S. economic output or more than 94 percent of all U.S. household assets. Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve chairman, last week bemoaned what he called Washington’s “deafening” silence about the future crunch.
President Bush signed into law a $350 billion tax-cut package on Wednesday saying:‘ ‘We can say loud and clear to the American people: You got more of your own money to spend so that this economy can get a good wind behind it.”
The estimates reflect the extent to which the annual deficit, the national debt and other widely reported, backward-looking data are becoming archaic and misleading as measures of the government’s solvency. Mr. Smetters, now a University of Pennsylvania finance professor, said tax cuts were only a fraction of the imbalance, and that the bigger problem “is the whole [budget] language we’re using.”Laurence Kotlikoff, an expert on long-term budget accounting, alleged in a recent Boston Globe editorial that the Bush administration suppressed the research to ease passage of the tax-cut plan.
An administration official said the study was designed as a thought-piece for internal discussion — one among many left every year on the cutting-room floor — and noted the budget’s extensive discussion of projected, 75-year Social Security and Medicare shortfalls.
Copyright or Used by Permission, ©2006 ChewinTheFat.com

How many more?

Sgt. Dunakin, Sgt. Romans and Sgt. Sakai are dead today. It isn't enough to console the familes. Oakland, California is 'short' three wonderful men on their police force. There is another officer struggling for his life and one a hero for killing the man with the weapon.

What if something else occurred. What if a 'friend' of the murder decided to 'help out' with an assault weapon of his own. What if the neighborhood became a 'No Go' zone? Not possible in the USA. Nonsense, there are already 'No Go' zones in some of the worst crime ridden areas in this country. But, take it one step further, what if the USA becomes a Juarez? Don't tell me the potential is not there, we already know where the drug cartels get their weapons.

The United States of America does not need or should desire personal possession of assault weapons and I defy anyone to make a valid argument otherwise, even in Alaska. Time to get it done. Regulations and plenty of them. There has to be a limit on the number manufactured within the country as well. That is NOT per manufacturer that is 'per year' of manufacturing !


Sgt. Mark Dunakin, 40, was a traffic officer that was hired November 1991. He was pronounced dead after he was shot during a traffic stop at 7400 MacArthur Blvd. in Oakland, Calif., on Saturday, March 21, 2009. (Oakland Police Department)

Sure there are tensions in the community. Yeah, things can go wrong. No, I don't want to be at the end of a mistake, nor do I want any member of my family or friends cut down by a mistake, but, the chances of that are far less when people no longer possess assault weapons and officers have to be better and faster than any measure they have to protecting themselves.


Sgt. Ervin Romans, 43, was hired January 1996. He was pronounced dead after he was shot as he entered an apartment on 74th Ave. in search of a suspect that shot at Oakland police officers hours earlier in Oakland, Calif., on Saturday, March 21, 2009. (Oakland Police Department)

I know all the arguments. They aren't valid. Sgt. Sakai was doing his job. Oh, I know they put their lives on the line everyday and they know the danger, but, hell and damnation that is NO EXCUSE for increasing the chances he is going to face death more often or in greater opportunity.


Sgt. Daniel Sakai, 35, was hired December 2000. He was pronounced dead after he was shot as he entered an apartment on 74th Ave. in search of a suspect that shot at Oakland police officers hours earlier in Oakland, Calif., on Saturday, March 21, 2009. (Oakland Police Department)


Three officers died yesterday in Oakland, California.

How many Mexicans died by the same method?

When is the USA going to ban assault rifles forever?




Morning Papers - It's Origins


The Rooster

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