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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (113379)	5/10/2012 11:30:13 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 149317

Survey shows public wants deep cuts in Pentagon spending. Mitt Romney would add $2.1 trillion by Meteor Blades Follow As noted a couple of months ago in Mitt Romney's proposal for Pentagon spending is a ridiculous joke, the all-but-crowned GOP presidential nominee has for years proposed that the Pentagon get a budget amounting to 4 percent of GDP. Last October, he spoke at the Citadel and added some specifics. CNN has finally gotten around to pointing out that the Romney plan would pile an additional $2.1 trillion onto Pentagon spending over the next decade if the extra percentage of GDP were added gradually. If his plan were in place right now, it would add $100 billion to the 2013 budget, a boost of 20 percent to core Pentagon spending, and $2.3 trillion over 10 years. Coincidentally, that's just about how much an innovative new survey released Thursday found that Americans said they would like to see cut from the budget, 20 percent. The survey was conducted by The Center for Public Integrity. R. Jeffrey Smith is CPI's managing editor for national security: According to the survey, in which respondents were told about the size of the budget as well as shown expert arguments for and against spending cuts, two-thirds of Republicans and nine in 10 Democrats supported making immediate cuts — a position at odds with the leaderships of both political parties. The average total cut was around $103 billion, a substantial portion of the current $562 billion base defense budget, while the majority supported cutting it at least $83 billion. These amounts both exceed a threatened cut of $55 billion at the end of this year under so-called “sequestration” legislation passed in 2011, which Pentagon officials and lawmakers alike have claimed would be devastating. “When Americans look at the amount of defense spending compared to spending on other programs, they see defense as the one that should take a substantial hit to reduce the deficit,” said Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation (PPC), and the lead developer of the survey. “Clearly the polarization that you are seeing on the floor of the Congress is not reflective of the American people.” While Romney's views, and those of House Republicans, are far out of sync with these results, the respondents also didn't agree with President Barack Obama's approach of maintaining something fairly close to the current level by reducing the growth in inflation-adjusted Pentagon spending over the next 10 years. His proposed spending for 2013 cuts just $7 billion from the core Pentagon budget, less than 2 percent. The survey found that about three-fourths of respondents wanted immediate cuts in spending. And even more, 85 percent, wanted deep and immediate cuts in spending for continuing U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan. While Republican respondents in the survey indicated they want smaller cuts than Democrats, they still want deep reductions in Pentagon spending. Made clear by the survey, which ought to be no surprise: People react differently depending on how the information is presented. But one thing stood out no matter how various issues were approached: By far the most durable finding—even after hearing strong arguments to the contrary—was that existing spending levels are simply too high. Respondents were asked twice, in highly different ways, to say what they thought the budget should be, and a majority supported roughly the same answer each time: a cut of at least 11 to 13 percent (they cut on average 18 to 22 percent). To politicians trembling at the thought of being painted as weak on defense because they seek a reasonable budget for the Pentagon, these results ought to provide some campaign ammunition at odds with what they usually are saddled with. Mitt Romney and other conservatives, including former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, who has supported the idea of "4% for Freedom," and current Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who wants to keep Pentagon spending cuts to a minimum, are far out of step with the public in this matter. Come 2013, when Barack Obama settles in for his second term, he should do some evolving on how much the United States really needs to spend on defense compared with what the military-industrial-congressional complex keeps telling us that we should, that we must, spend. The CPI study provides evidence that he would be far from alone if he chooses to give the MICC a substantial haircut.

To: Road Walker who wrote (113379)	5/11/2012 8:27:28 AM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

The last 4 years has been a major departure from the last 80 years, both in breadth and scope of their activity. Obama and Bernanke are taking economic interventionism to new extremes that are unprecedented in size over the last 80 years. It shows exactly how ignorant you are of what is happening to our financial system. But go ahead and carry on with your head in the sand routine. Nothing to see here...just move along: ---------------- How the Fed Favors The 1% By Mark Spitznagel, on May 10th, 2012 dailycapitalist.com A major issue in this year’s presidential campaign is the growing disparity between rich and poor, the 1% versus the 99%. While the president’s solutions differ from those of his likely Republican opponent, they both ignore a principal source of this growing disparity. The source is not runaway entrepreneurial capitalism, which rewards those who best serve the consumer in product and price. (Would we really want it any other way?) There is another force that has turned a natural divide into a chasm: the Federal Reserve. The relentless expansion of credit by the Fed creates artificial disparities based on political privilege and economic power. David Hume, the 18th-century Scottish philosopher, pointed out that when money is inserted into the economy (from a government printing press or, as in Hume’s time, the importation of gold and silver), it is not distributed evenly but “confined to the coffers of a few persons, who immediately seek to employ it to advantage.” In the 20th century, the economists of the Austrian school built upon this fact as their central monetary tenet. Ludwig von Mises and his students demonstrated how an increase in money supply is beneficial to those who get it first and is detrimental to those who get it last. Monetary inflation is a process, not a static effect. To think of it only in terms of aggregate price levels (which is all Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke seems capable of) is to ignore this pernicious process and the imbalance and economic dislocation that it creates. As Mises protégé Murray Rothbard explained, monetary inflation is akin to counterfeiting, which necessitates that some benefit and others don’t. After all, if everyone counterfeited in proportion to their wealth, there would be no real economic benefit to anyone. Similarly, the expansion of credit is uneven in the economy, which results in wealth redistribution. To borrow a visual from another Mises student, Friedrich von Hayek, the Fed’s money creation does not flow evenly like water into a tank, but rather oozes like honey into a saucer, dolloping one area first and only then very slowly dribbling to the rest. The Fed doesn’t expand the money supply by uniformly dropping cash from helicopters over the hapless masses. Rather, it directs capital transfers to the largest banks (whether by overpaying them for their financial assets or by lending to them on the cheap), minimizes their borrowing costs, and lowers their reserve requirements. All of these actions result in immediate handouts to the financial elite first, with the hope that they will subsequently unleash this fresh capital onto the unsuspecting markets, raising demand and prices wherever they do. The Fed, having gone on an unprecedented credit expansion spree, has benefited the recipients who were first in line at the trough: banks (imagine borrowing for free and then buying up assets that you know the Fed is aggressively buying with you) and those favored entities and individuals deemed most creditworthy. Flush with capital, these recipients have proceeded to bid up the prices of assets and resources, while everyone else has watched their purchasing power decline. At some point, of course, the honey flow stops—but not before much malinvestment. Such malinvestment is precisely what we saw in the historic 1990s equity and subsequent real-estate bubbles (and what we’re likely seeing again today in overheated credit and equity markets), culminating in painful liquidation. The Fed is transferring immense wealth from the middle class to the most affluent, from the least privileged to the most privileged. This coercive redistribution has been a far more egregious source of disparity than the president’s presumption of tax unfairness (if there is anything unfair about approximately half of a population paying zero income taxes) or deregulation. Pitting economic classes against each other is a divisive tactic that benefits no one. Yet if there is any upside, it is perhaps a closer examination of the true causes of the problem. Before we start down the path of arguing about the merits of redistributing wealth to benefit the many, why not first stop redistributing it to the most privileged?