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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (661213)	7/8/2012 1:34:11 PM
From: i-node	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583389

Yet, the us continues to lead the world in innovation and overall quality of care. It is worth noting that most new medical technologies today would not exist were it not for the evil American health care system. Something you don't hear Obama bragging about.

To: bentway who wrote (661213)	7/8/2012 1:42:47 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583389

How many federal workers are there? By Ed O'Keefe Remember last week when Congressional Republicans proposed freezing federal hires in order to cut back on government spending? The cuts would mean fewer workers receiving generous pay and benefits, they said. But opponents argued that the government can't afford to cut back and that most of the new federal jobs are in the national security and defense sectors where Republicans wouldn't cut anyway. Still others noted that the size of the federal workforce compared to the overall U.S. population has dropped steadily since the 1960s, thanks to a booming population and cutbacks made during the Reagan and Clinton years. So how many federal workers are there really? Differing ways of measuring federal employment produce different counts. One method, commonly used in federal budgeting, is to calculate "full-time equivalent" positions, or FTEs, on a fiscal year basis. A full-time employee working the entire year would count as one FTE, as would, for example, two part-time employees each working half-time. Another method, used in the Office of Personnel Management's FedScope database, counts all employees who are in pay status as of the end of each calendar quarter. The Eye's method of tallying up the workers uses figures from George W. Bush's administration that tallied the total number of Executive Branch employees -- including U.S. Postal Service workers -- and determined the number of federal workers per 1,000 Americans. In order to establish a somewhat fair administration-to-administration comparison, The Eye compared workforce totals from the first full calendar year of a president's term, starting with John F. Kennedy. We'll take a deeper dive into other personnel stats in the coming days, but check out today's figures and leave your thoughts in the comments section below: Federal Government Employment Levels Through the Years (including the U.S. Postal Service)" Executive Branch civilians Total U.S. population Executive Branch employees per 1,000 population 1962 (Kennedy) 2.48 million 186.5 million 13.3 1964 (Johnson) 2.47 million 191.8 million 12.9 1970 (Nixon) 2.94 million* 205 million 14.4 1975 (Ford) 2.84 million 215.9 million 13.2 1978 (Carter) 2.87 million 222.5 million 12.9 1982 (Reagan) 2.77 million 232.1 million 11.9 1990 (Bush) 3.06 million* 249.6 million 12.3 1994 (Clinton) 2.9 million 263.1 million 11.1 2002 (Bush) 2.63 million 287.8 million 9.1 2010 (Obama) 2.65 million+ 310.3 million+ 8.4+ SOURCE: Office of Management and Budget. *= Figure includes temporary Census Bureau workers. += Estimates by OMB and U.S. Census Bureau." voices.washingtonpost.com

To: bentway who wrote (661213)	7/9/2012 11:31:10 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583389

Why focus groups' incredulity matters By Steve Benen - Mon Jul 9, 2012 9:45 AM EDT It seems like ages ago, but in October 2001, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Republican policymakers pushed for what they called an "economic stimulus" bill. The GOP plan was absurd -- the "stimulus" was a massive corporate giveaway, tilted towards the richest of the rich. Even the Wall Street Journal admitted the plan "mainly padded corporate bottom lines." Democrats, eager to expose the ridiculous GOP agenda, convened focus groups to sharpen the message, but quickly ran into trouble: voters thought it was impossible that the GOP would actually do this. Paul Krugman explained at the time that the Republican stimulus "was so extreme that when political consultants tried to get reactions from voter focus groups, the voters refused to believe that they were describing the bill accurately." I couldn't help but think of this when I saw a report yesterday on the pro-Obama super PAC, Priorities Action USA, which ran into similar trouble telling voters about Mitt Romney. [Bill] Burton and his colleagues spent the early months of 2012 trying out the pitch that Romney was the most far-right presidential candidate since Barry Goldwater. It fell flat. The public did not view Romney as an extremist. For example, when Priorities informed a focus group that Romney supported the Ryan budget plan -- and thus championed "ending Medicare as we know it" -- while also advocating tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the respondents simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing. [emphasis added] As Jon Chait put it, focus group participants were hearing accurate descriptions, but the truth "struck those voters as so cartoonishly evil that they found the charge implausible." Imagine how frustrating this must be to Democratic strategists. They can tell a room full of voters the truth about Romney's agenda, and a whole lot of folks respond, "That can't be right." I can appreciate the underlying problem here: voters have been confronted with a lot of wild accusations over the years, and have become largely inured to the hyperbole. When the American mainstream hears about Candidate A or Party B supporting some radical policy, it assumes, just as a matter of course, that the claims come with built-in exaggerations. It's "just politics." Except, sometimes, it's not. To a certain extent, I suspect this is why the Republican Party didn't pay a severe price for the debt-ceiling crisis they created last year. In reality, the entire Republican Party threatened to crash the American economy, on purpose, and trash the full faith and credit of the United States, deliberately, unless Democrats met a series of non-negotiable demands. It was, to my mind, the most scandalous tactic adopted by a major party since the Civil War, but the American mainstream never responded that way -- in part because the media characterized the crisis as being the fault of "both sides," and in part because it seemed so hard to believe that literally every Republican in Washington would hold America hostage, threatening to do severe damage to the nation and its people unless they got their way. But these assumptions are wrong. In the case of Romney, the Republican really does support a budget plan that would scrap Medicare and give tax breaks to millionaires. He really is planning to eliminate Wall Street safeguards and take away health care benefits from millions. He really believes the country will be better off if more teachers and police officers are laid off, and foreclosures continue unabated. This isn't a liberal caricature based on election-year demagoguery; *this is Mitt Romney's policy agenda.* If the American mainstream assumes accurate descriptions of Romney's plans are literally unbelievable, voters may be in for a shock early next year. maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com