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To: Les H who wrote (305962)	6/7/2011 12:25:26 PM
From: joseffy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Barack Obama is floundering in a sea of bad news, as White House chief economist jumps ship ............................................................ By Nile Gardiner June 7th, 2011 UK TELEGRAPH blogs.telegraph.co.uk Obama's halo is slipping If last week wasn’t bad enough for President Obama with the release of a series of dire economic reports, this week is looking even worse, kicking off with the resignation on Monday evening of his chief economist Austan Goolsbee. On Friday Goolsbee struggled to explain an unexpected rise in unemployment figures, comically describing them as a “bump in the road”, hardly reassuring news to the nearly 14 million Americans who are now out of work. After the announcement, Barack Obama paid tribute to his close friend and soon to be former adviser, with a surreal claim that his administration is actually generating “millions of jobs” at a time when the unemployment lines are actually growing. Over the past several years, he has helped steer our country out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. And although there is still much work ahead, his insights and counsel have helped lead us toward an economy that is growing and creating millions of jobs. It’s not hard to see why Goolsbee is leaving the administration to return to the safer confines of the University of Chicago School of Business, where he taught for 14 years. The economic data on the US economy is relentlessly bad, from rising jobless numbers and declining consumer confidence to a hugely depressed housing market. As former Clinton adviser and Democratic strategist James Carville pointed out on Imus in the Morning on the Fox Business Network, the outlook for 2012 is looking increasingly grim for the president if the job figures don’t improve: “If 54,000 new jobs is the new standard, it’s going to be a very, very rough 2012 for President Obama. But the three-month average was 160,000. If that is the case, then he will do OK. I can’t tell you what will happen. But yes, if this, if this last jobs number is an indication of future job numbers, it’s going to be very, very rough.” And as The Chicago Tribune notes, Goolsbee is the latest in a string of White House economic advisers to head for the door, following in the footsteps of Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council, Christina Romer, whom he replaced as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Jared Bernstein, Vice President Joe Biden’s chief economic adviser. And he certainly won’t be the last. As the economy heads further south, and public disillusionment with the Obama presidency’s big government agenda grows, expect to see an exodus of key staff who want an early start to the post-November 2012 job search

To: Les H who wrote (305962)	6/7/2011 12:31:36 PM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

The Bush Tax Cuts: Ten Years Later — By Stephanie Mencimer \| Tue Jun. 7, 2011 3:00 AM PDT. You probably didn't realize it, but June 7, 2011, is a momentous day in US history. It marks the 10-year anniversary of the signing into law of the Bush tax cuts, a day when President George W. Bush helped replace an unprecedented federal budget surplus with a mountain of debt in order to slash taxes for rich people (including dead ones). The anniversary of the cuts comes at a particularly fortuitous moment, with the political classes deep in debate over the increase in the federal deficit. Now is a good time to take a look back to see just how well those tax cuts have worked out for the country. Some highlights, with data from the Economic Policy Institute: Big debt: Between 2001 and 2010, the Bush tax cuts added $2.6 trillion to the public debt, 50 percent of the total debt accrued during that time. Over the past 10 years, the country has spent more than $400 billion just servicing the debt created by the cuts. Supply-side failure: Far from paying for themselves with increased economic activity as promised, the tax cuts have depleted the public treasury. Tax collections have plunged to their lowest share of the economy in 60 years. No jobs: Between 2002 and 2007, employment increased by less than 1 percent when the economy was supposed to be expanding. Employment growth barely kept pace with population growth. Between the end of 2001, when the country was in a recession, and the peak of the real estate bubble, er, economic expansion in 2007, the US economy performed worse than at any time since the end of World War II. Rich people benefit: The best-known result of the Bush tax cuts is that virtually all the benefits were conferred upon people who didn't need them at all and who didn't use the money to, say, create more jobs or pay their workers better. Median weekly earnings fell more than 2 percent between 2001 and 2007. Meanwhile, people making over $3 million a year, who account for just 0.1 percent of taxpayers, got an average tax cut of $520,000, more than 450 times what the average middle-income family received. Entitlements for trust-fund slackers: For a party that likes to talk about the virtues of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, personal responsibility and entrepreneurship, the Bush tax cuts were like an entitlement program for the already entitled. You'd be hard pressed to find a better way to create a lazy leisure class than by eliminating the estate tax. But that's what Republicans did when they reduced and then phased out the estate tax, ensuring that the country would be plagued by people like this guy for decades to come. For a graphic view of the dramatic change in wealth inequality fueled in part by the Bush tax cuts, check out these amazing charts created by Mother Jones editor Dave Gilson. Meanwhile, a few liberal groups are going to commemorate the tax-cut anniversary by holding protests around the country highlighting the sorts of things that didn't get funded while Republicans were slashing taxes for rich people. Activists in Fredericksburg, Virginia, will have a mock toilet on hand that partipants can flush money down, symbolizing money that went to rich people rather than to schools or other critical services. The Every Child Matters Education fund, which is urging people to participate in the rallies, points out that in 2001, before the tax cuts went into effect, the federal government invested $8,634 in inflation-adjusted dollars for every four-year-old in Head Start, the Great Society-era early childhood program designed to help prepare poor kids to do well in school. In 2011, that investment declined to $7,824 per child. Funding for the Social Services Block Grant, which funds programs that combat child abuse and neglect, among other things, has dropped more than 20 percent in real dollars. In the long run, it's clear that the legacy of the Bush tax cuts will be a huge debt that this generation of children will be largely unprepared to do much about. motherjones.com