The government faces a fourth year of trillion-plus deficits in 2012, according to new projections released Tuesday—numbers which also show little relief in the future unless Washington comes to grips with needed changes in its tax and spending policies.
Like Aunt Cassandra coming down from the attic, the Congressional Budget Office steps squarely into the 2012 campaign season with the 147-page report which might have been subtitled “It’s not just the economy stupid, it’s also the debt.”
The $1.079 trillion deficit now projected for this fiscal year ending Sept. 30 is a step backwards from what CBO had predicted in August. And to punch home its message, the non-partisan agency outlines an especially grim scenario in which Congress not only extends all the current Bush-era tax cuts but pulls the plug on the $1.2 trillion in sequester set in motion by the Budget Control Act last summer.
Under this scenario—which can’t be ruled out politically—deficits would stubbornly hover just under $1 trillion through 2017, adding another $4.7 trillion altogether to the mounting federal debt.
Under the more prudent—and many would say unrealistic— scenario of ending tax breaks and implementing cuts, the cumulative deficits would be $1.72 trillion or $3 trillion less from 2013-2017. But even this path comes with a warning from CBO: that debt service costs are already on the rise and will command an ever greater share of the annual budget.
“The federal budget remains out of balance throughout the decade,” the report reads. “The resulting accumulation of debt, along with rising interest rates, drives up the cost of financing that debt; in CBO’s projections, net interest costs grow significantly from 1.4 percent of GDP this year to 2.5 percent in 2022.”
This is insanity, if I were the Republican candidates, I would be emphasizing this point to the high heavens! This is madness and we have to correct this in 2012.
What do the NAR, Consumer Confidence and CBO forecasts have in common? If you said, “they are all completely worthless” you are absolutely correct. Alas, the market needs to “trade” off numbers, which is why the just released CBO numbers apparently are important… And the fact that the CBO predicted negative $2.5 trillion in net debt by 2011 back in 2011 is largely ignored. Anyway, here are some of the highlights.
2012 Deficit: $1.1 trillion; 2013 Deficit: $0.6 – yes, we are cackling like mad too…
Unemployment to remain above 8% in 2012 and 2013; will be around 7% by end of 2015; to drop to 5.25% by end of 2022.
This forecast is utterly idiotic and is completely unattainable unless the US workforce drops to all time lows and the US economy generates 300,000 jobs a month for 10 years
Needless to say, CBO assumes the best of all worlds in this meaningless forecast
But here is the kicker: “Had that portion of the decline in the labor force participation rate since 2007 that is attributable to neither the aging of the baby boomers nor the downturn in the business cycle (on the basis of the experience in previous downturns) not occurred, the unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2011 would have been about 1¼ percentage points higher than the actual rate of 8.7 percent” translation: CBO just admitted that the BLS numbers are bogus and real unemployment is 10%. Thank you
Friends and relatives said Susan Poff and Robert Kamin of Oakland were the perfect pair to adopt a foster child.
They had dedicated their careers to helping others escape poverty, she as a physician assistant in a city-run clinic in the Tenderloin and he as a clinical psychologist for inmates in the San Francisco County Jail system.
But now, less than a decade after they adopted, their 15-year-old son stands accused of strangling both Poff, 50, and Kamin, 55, then hiding their bodies in the back of the family’s PT Cruiser.
Police were called to the family’s home on Athol Avenue on Friday by a co-worker who was concerned when Kamin did not show up for work.
[…]
Initially the son, whose name is being withheld because of his age, denied any involvement, but later told officers what had happened, authorities said. He was arrested on suspicion of murder Saturday and is being held at the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center in San Leandro.
Co-workers said Poff and Kamin were having some arguments with their son, some of it having to do with him spending too much time in the Occupy Oakland encampment, but nothing that sounded beyond the scope of typical teenage rebelliousness.
I title this with a rather short headline, because frankly I cannot think of anything to put in there, besides the woman’s name. It was Indira Gandhi, who served as the third Prime Minister of India, who said the following, “Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.” It takes a great deal of bravery to forgive someone who has wronged you. I could write about that for hours on end. If I had a dollar for everyone who has ever wronged me, I could live a very comfortable life as a very wealthy man. Unfortunately, I have more forgiveness than I have money. Funny how that works, is it not?
The dunder head twins
I noticed a rather odd thing happening on this new blog with the stats earlier today, for some odd reason they kept going up. I check and sure enough, a familiar name was back in the headlines —Jennifer Petkov. I let out a rather audible groan and went to look at the stats for the old blog of mine and sure enough, the hits were climbing quicker than the unemployment rate in Detroit. I noticed Jennifer Petkov’s name in the search results. I sighed and thought, “What has that crazy woman done this time?” I opened a browser tab, did a search, and saw that Mrs. Petkov and her overgrown boyfriend or husband, (not sure which…) was going to be on Dr. Phil’s show. “Oh great, give the little attention whore more than she really deserves,” I muttered to myself in a rather rude sounding tone, which was even bad for me. I give the little bleached blonde bimbo a year, she will be doing porn flicks, or nudie spreads in playboy. Yeah, I said that Jennifer, and I am damned proud of it. I would just love to see her to try suing me for insulting her.
"You blew it Blondie, big time"
Anyhow, I watched the show. I have conflicted feelings about it. I did not like how the show was biased against Jennifer Petkov. I know what she did was horrible, but I believe everyone should be fairly represented in the media, and she was denied that. Further, I think her lawyers might have given her some bad advice in letting her do the show. What struck me as being very odd; is how Jennifer Petkov at first, admitted to doing some stuff, then sort of being sorry for everything. I believe she does not want to implicate herself even more than she already has. Furthermore, I did not like how Dr. Phil just took the accusations of Rebecca Rose at face value — for all we know, Rose herself could have put those postings on Facebook and blamed Jennifer for it. Unless we have some sort verifiable proof from Facebook, such as an IP address that belongs to Jennifer Petkov, then the things, outside of those photo shops could have been done by someone else, including Mrs. Rose herself. I wonder if Petkov’s lawyer bothered to find that out at all.
Rest in Peace Kathleen
Now before I go any further, something needs to be said. This entire damned thing is not about the two broads who were friends and had some sort of dirty tampon fight. What this truly is about; is Kathleen Edward. A little angel is gone, to be with her Mother and her grandfather. The actions of Jennifer Petkov were reprehensible, there is no dispute to that; however, in our reporting of those actions, we must not give this idiotic bimbo of a woman any more attention than she truly deserves.
Up above I wrote a quote that read, “Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.” The person that exemplifies that fact is Kathleen Edward’s father, Robert Edward. On Dr. Phil’s show, Robert Edward expressed a desire to forgive Jennifer Petkov, because Kathleen would have wanted that, and because of that, he was done with the issue. I have to commend the man for that, because it takes a great deal of courage and strength to do something like this.
I hope that this is the last time I will ever have to write about this awful subject. I was not that happy to become involved with it; however, because I am from the area, I feel the need to write about it. The main reason is just that it makes everyone from this area, to those outside of the area — look like crazy people. I believe there are some that honestly believe that Michigan is a crazy State filled with crazy people. Outside of the occasional stray, I can proudly state that we are saner that some might think. However, let me state that sometimes sanity is so overrated.
In closing: I hope that I was able to add a bit of humor to a rather dark, depressing subject. I hope that we can put this idiotic dirty tampon fight between Jennifer Petkov and Rebecca Rose to rest finally and that little Kathleen will finally be able to rest in peace. I hope both families move on and I hope everyone else moves on and this rather sad story is remanded to the dustbin of history. Lastly, I hope that Jennifer Petkov has learned her lesson and never logs on to Facebook again, at least not with hatred in her heart towards anyone. Because as she has found out here in the last few years; that can be quite an unprofitable venture.
On a new episode of Dr. Phil airing at 5 p.m. Monday on WWJ-TV, the woman accused of taunting a neighbor’s child while she was dying of Huntington’s disease flat-out denies the allegation.
“Did you say, ‘I wish Kathleen would hurry up and die?’” Dr. Phil McGraw is seen asking Scott and Jennifer Petkov of Trenton in a sneak peek of the show. Jennifer Petkov is charged with trying to run over another neighbor and faces a court hearing next month.
“I have not done any of the things they’re accusing me of,” said Petkov, who’s been called ‘The Devil of Detroit Street.’
It’s a different story than the one Petkov told when she was first accused of parading up and down the street with a coffin in the back of a truck and creating a Facebook page with an image of young Kathleen Edward covered with a skull and crossbones.
“They’ve been called the cruelest couple in America,” McGraw said.
She did not do what she is accused of; yeah sure she isn’t. 🙄
Anyhow, I figure my hits are really going to go off the charts with this. Hopefully my new server will handle it. *gulp*
“The blue model is breaking down so fast and so far that not even its supporters can ignore the disintegration and disaster it now presages. Liberal Democrats in states like Rhode Island and cities like Chicago are cutting pensions and benefits and laying off workers out of financial necessity rather than ideological zeal. The blue model can no longer pay its bills, and not even its friends can keep it alive. Our real choice, however, is not between blue or pre-blue. We can’t get back to the 1890s or 1920s any more than we can go back to the 1950s and 1960s. We may not yet be able to imagine what a post-blue future looks like, but that is what we will have to build. . . . There are a lot of reasons to be nostalgic for the old days (especially for the white males who were, far and away, the biggest beneficiaries of the old system), but there are also good reasons to bid the blue model good riddance.”
Please, go read the rest of that; because in a sense, this article says much of what I have written in the past on my old blog. Basically, that the left went off the rails years ago; along with organized labor, when they shifted from offense to defense. Since then, they have gotten worse and worse. A perfect example was in 2008, that whole thing with Hillary and Obama was a perfect manifestation of the class warfare between Man and Woman, Black and White; it all got to be a bit too much for me. Which is why I left them.
The sad thing is, the left, as it were, got even crazier after Obama was elected. It was as if the arrogance of the left went through the roof; they had the media, the white house, congress —- everything — and what did Obama do with all that favoritism? He blew it! I believe the grassroots left knows they were played; the establishment left does not really care, they are getting paychecks; but the people I know, the bloggers, are not happy.
Which brings me to my last point; I really wish this process between Newt and Romney would finally end and the Republican Party would get behind one of them. This whole populist versus establishment fighting is wearing very thin with me. It has nuances of the left’s class warfare; which I really do not get into at all. Do not misunderstand me here; I am all for airing someones dirty laundry and misdeeds, but to wrap it up in a package that the left would approve of, is not a way to fight a battle.
In other words; Florida’s primary cannot come quick enough!
An update to my infirmities situation, I do believe I have rounded the corner. I was able to eat some tacos for dinner and I just ate a doughnut here a few minutes ago. So, I believe I am going to make it.
