The Stafford Voice

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current events

CBO: Eliminating the Deficit is Easy

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One thing that people would like to see is the elimination of the deficit. And, with the election season nearing, it will become a hot issue for debate. The current administration has greatly added to the problem by thinking they could spend their way out of debt. But, everyone knows that when more goes out than comes in, you have a problem. One of the first things that should be done in eliminating the deficit is stopping the curent spending.

This is echoed with the release of new numbers from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Cato’s Daniel J. Mitchell points this out in the following graph.

Balancing the budget with spending restraint

Politicians lead you to think that balancing the budget is such a difficult task, and that the only way to do this is to raise taxes. But, with the research based on the new CBO numbers, with the current tax rates and making the Bush-era tax cuts permanent, it is easy to see that they are fooling you. Keeping the current revenue and putting a real freeze on spending, you can see that the deficit would be cleared by 2017.

Here is a video of Daniel Mitchell providing more details.

John Wheeler Cause of Death; Blunt Force Trauma

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As many suspected, the reported cause of death for John Wheeler was by blunt force trauma. But, there are still some questions left unanswered.

AssociatedPress report:

A federal military consultant whose body was found in a landfill was assaulted and died of blunt force trauma, the state medical examiner’s office said on Friday. Officials offered no other details about the death of the consultant, John Wheeler III of New Castle, Del., whose body was found in a load of trash that was being dumped at a Wilmington landfill on Dec. 31. Officials had determined several weeks ago that Mr. Wheeler was a homicide victim, but they withheld the cause of death until toxicology tests were completed. Mr. Wheeler, 66, was seen on video surveillance cameras wandering around downtown Wilmington in a disoriented manner in the two days before his body was found.

 

Egypt; Chaos in Cairo

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Political turmoil has overtaken the streets of Cairo, Egypt. Tanks have been called in, and President Hosni Mubarak has released his entire cabinet. Along with the shutdown of their internet, including Facebook and Twitter, the citizens have taken their voices of opposition to the streets and formed some very intense protests that have led to some deaths. While many things have unfolded because of the violence, it certainly is not over. And, things only look to get worse.

Watch HERE at Aljazeera for a live stream of the happenings.

Defiant Protesters in Egypt
People power: As dawn breaks, an Egyptian man stands in front of a burning armoured vehicle in central Cairo. Despite the one-sided nature of armed troops versus civilians, protesters remain defiant

House GOP Conservatives Unveil $2.5 Trillion in Spending Cuts

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Conservative Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, unveiled in a “Spending Reduction Act” today that would cut $2.5 Trillion over the next ten years. To go along with it is a companion bill to be introduced in the Senate by Sen. Jim DeMint.

The Daily Caller –

Jordan’s “Spending Reduction Act” would eliminate such things as the U.S. Agency for International Development and its $1.39 billion annual budget, the $445 million annual subsidy for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the $1.5 billion annual subsidy for Amtrak, $2.5 billion in high speed rail grants, the $150 million subsidy for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, and it would cut in half to $7.5 billion the federal travel budget.

But the program eliminations and reductions would account for only $330 billion of the $2.5 trillion in cuts. The bulk of the cuts would come from returning non-defense discretionary spending – which is currently $670 billion out of a $3.8 trillion budget for the 2011 fiscal year – to the 2006 level of $496.7 billion, through 2021.

Going back to 2006 levels would reduce spending by $2.3 trillion over ten years. It is a significantly more drastic cut than the one proposed by House Republican leadership in the Pledge to America last fall, which proposed moving non-defense, non-mandatory spending for the current fiscal year back to 2008 levels, which was $522.3 billion. Jordan’s proposal includes the recommendation from the Pledge for the current fiscal year, which ends in September.

The proposal would cut the federal work force by 15 percent and freeze automatic pay raises for government employees for five years.     Continue reading

Michael Steele Out, Reince Priebus In

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Reince Priebus is the newly elected lead of the Republican National Committee, and Michael Steele is out.

via CBSNews:

New RNC Chairman Reince Priebus today acknowledged as much after his fellow committee members chose him to put him at the helm of the organization.

“We recognize that the Democrats have taken this country on the wrong path, and it isn’t going to be easy or glamorous, but together we must lead,” he said.

Priebus, a 38-year-old lawyer who served as chairman of the Wisconsin GOP, said he plans to keep his head down and get to work. That means restructuring the RNC’s financial operation, hiring a top-notch staff, improving the lines of communication with state parties and — perhaps most importantly — restoring the faith of the party’s donors. 

“Together we can defeat Barack Obama in 2012, together, unified as a committee,” Priebus said.

Gun Sales Surge After Arizona Shooting

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A Bloomberg report shows that gun sales have increased after the Arizona shooting.

One-day sales of handguns in Arizona jumped 60 percent to 263 on Jan. 10 compared with 164 the corresponding Monday a year ago, the second-biggest increase of any state in the country, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation data.

Handgun sales rose 65 percent to 395 in Ohio; 16 percent to 672 in California; 38 percent to 348 in Illinois; and 33 percent to 206 in New York, the FBI data show. Sales increased nationally about 5 percent, to 7,906 guns.

More of the Same

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by John Stossel

Last year, I reported that the United States fell from sixth to eighth place — behind Canada — in the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal’s 2010 Index of Economic Freedom. Now, we’ve fallen further. In the just-released 2011 Index, the United States is in ninth place. That’s behind Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada, Ireland and Denmark.
   
The biggest reason for the continued slide? Spending as a percentage of gross domestic product. (State and local spending is not counted.)
   
The debt picture is dismal, too. We are heading into Greece’s territory.

Continue reading . . .

Census: Growth and Taxes

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The census numbers were released and it wasn’t as pretty as the democrats had anticipated. It was a blow in more than just a power loss. It was a silent protest against taxes that sent many packing to states that had no state taxes. Which are republican leaning states.

Census: Fast Growth in States With No Income Tax | by Michael Barone

For those of us who are demographic buffs, Christmas came four days early when Census Bureau Director Robert Groves announced yesterday the first results of the 2010 Census and the reapportionment of House seats (and therefore electoral votes) among the states.

The resident population of the United States, he told us in a webcast, was 308,745,538. That’s an increase of 9.7 percent from the 281,421,906 in the 2000 Census — the smallest proportional increase than in any decade other than the Depression 1930s but a pretty robust increase for an advanced nation. It’s hard to get a grasp on such large numbers. So let me share a few observations on what they mean. Continue reading . . .

The Civil Right to Internet Access?

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by Michelle Malkin

When bureaucrats talk about increasing our “access” to x, y or z, what they’re really talking about is increasing exponentially their control over our lives. As it is with the government health care takeover, so it is with the newly approved government plan to “increase” Internet “access.” Call it Webcare.net neutrality

By a vote of 3-2, the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday adopted a controversial scheme to ensure “net neutrality” by turning unaccountable Democratic appointees into meddling online traffic cops. The panel will devise convoluted rules governing Internet service providers, bandwidth use, content, prices and even disclosure details on Internet speeds. The “neutrality” is brazenly undermined by preferential treatment toward wireless broadband networks. Moreover, the FCC’s scheme is widely opposed by Congress — and has already been rejected once in the courts. Demonized industry critics have warned that the regulations will stifle innovation and result in less access, not more.

Sound familiar? The parallels with health care are striking. The architects of Obamacare promised to provide Americans more access to health insurance — and cast their agenda as a fundamental universal entitlement. Continue reading . . .

Top Political Issues in 2010

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There is no doubt that 2010 is one for the record books. The year was filled with events and issues, both political and not, that will forever change lives and nations. Even as the year comes to an end, new and pressing issues come to be.

As you could list hundreds of issues, some of the most important are:

  • Health Care
  • Gulf Oil Spill
  • The Ground Zero Mosque
  • Tea Party/Mid-Term Elections
  • Wikileaks

As previously stated, this is not a complete list but a list of some of the most influential issues that shaped 2010. [Read more…] about Top Political Issues in 2010