President Obama introduces his deficit-reduction plan

Who knows what might have caused the president to shift gears? Perhaps it was because he was twice rebuffed by the permatan Speaker of the House, the right honorable John Boehner of Virginia, during the course of the budget talks in July. Perhaps it was Mr. Boehner’s very public smack down, the next month, of Mr. Obama’s request to present his jobs bill to a joint session of congress on the 7th of September.

That last one surely must have stung. Especially as the proposed date was unceremoniously pushed forward because it happened to clash with a scheduled debate of the current crop of GOP … Read more...

Rumors of a scandal swirl as the bankrupt corporation owes taxpayers $535 million

Four months ago, there was President Obama, intrepid stimulator of the economy, sage creator of jobs, fount of hope and change, summoner of transcendence and transparency in governance, on a visit to the Solyndra plant in Fremont, CA, inspecting solar panels on the factory floor, shaking the hands of construction workers–in hard hats and reflective vests!–and addressing the beneficiaries of his stimulus and the innovators leading the world in the green energy technology revolution. He closed his speech at Solyndra, the recipient of a $535 million dollar loan from the U.S. taxpayer, with a ringing endorsement of the company and its work:

Every day that you build

Warren Buffett Urges Congress to Stop Coddling the Super-rich

Not days after the Rascal’s better than evens prediction that the debate on taxation would burn brightly through next year’s November elections, here is Warren Buffett with fresh fuel for the flame. Mr. Buffett, lest you forgot, is currently the world’s third richest man, with an Everest high fortune assessed at $50 billion.

In his most recent op-ed in this past Sunday’s New York Times, Buffett once again urges Congress to tax the mega-rich, including of course himself. The Sage of Omaha, as the Berkshire Hathaway investor is known, has made that same pitch on numerous occasions in the last few years. But his loud calls for higher taxes on the … Read more...

The Obama Jobs Speech Proposes a Solution and Sparks Tax Debate

President Barack Obama’s jobs speech to a joint session of Congress last Thursday night seemed to provide a blip of hope against a backdrop of unrelenting economic malaise, political gridlock in the capital, and the recent news that job growth had ground to a halt in August, the worst performance since September 2010. In an uncharacteristic display of executive leadership, President Obama abandoned the conciliatory, above-the-partisan-fray tone that has characterized much of his Presidency as well as the sweepingly inspirational, and conveniently vague, platitudes that swept him to electoral victory and, sounding confident and even mildly combative, delivered his plan to get America working again.

Despite a bevy of … Read more...