Showing posts with label Politics Nation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics Nation. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Friday, April 18, 2014
Jared Bernstein is a left-wing economist who works for MSNBC.
He recently appeared on the Rev. Al Sharpton’s show, “Politics Nation,” where Sharpton played the following soundbite from House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.:
“If Washington is serious about helping working families or serious about getting families out of work back to work, then it needs to get serious about our national debt. How do we do it? First we stop spending money we don't have.”
To this Bernstein, Joe Biden’s former top economist, responded: “Look, it is patently wrong on the numbers. They call Paul Ryan a numbers guy. He gets them wrong as often as not. The budget deficit as a share of GDP was 10 percent in 2009. Last I looked, it was 4 percent headed down to 3 percent. That's the largest four-year decline in the budget deficit since the mid-1950s, so he’s completely off about that. And almost 80 percent of those cuts have come from the spending side, not the revenue side.”
What kind of stunt did Bernstein just pull?
Ryan said nothing about the “deficit,” which is the gap between what government spends and what the government takes in a year. Ryan talked about our national “debt” -- the total government obligations that result from years of deficit spending and from the interest on that debt. Under Obama, the national debt has grown from about $10 trillion to about $17 trillion right now. According the Treasury Department, on January 20, 2009, when Obama took office, the national debt was $10,626,877,048,913.08. As of Jan. 31, 2014, the debt stood at $17,293,019,654,983.61. This is an increase of $6,666,142,606,070.53. CNS news said: “The total debt of the United States did not exceed $6.666 trillion until July 2003. In the little more than five years of the Obama presidency, the U.S. has accumulated as much new debt as it did in its first 227 years.”
And, yes, in the last couple of years the annual “deficit” has declined from about 10 percent of GDP to about 4 percent. But the shrinking deficit has followed historic non-World War II spending. Worse, the Congressional Budget Office expects the deficit to spike back up in the coming years.
The Wall Street Journal said: “The deficit has contracted sharply in the past few years. After four years of deficits in excess of $1 trillion, the deficit shrank to $680 billion in 2013 and is expected to keep narrowing this year and in 2015. This was caused in part by the growing economy, cuts to future spending, and changes to tax policy.”
But what about the future? Even President Obama has called the trajectory of the three so-called entitlement programs -- Medicare, Medicaid, Medicare -- ”unsustainable.” Plus, there is a brand new entitlement on top of the three others -- Obamacare.
Here’s our fiscal future according to Heritage Institute’s economist Stephen Moore:
“[W]hat hasn’t been advertised is the disgraceful longer-term outlook for our fiscal future, which took a turn for the worse. And Obamacare is the main culprit. In the long run, the budget deficit will be slightly more than $1.5 trillion WORSE than previously estimated.
“In 2015, the deficit starts exploding again -- to $912 billion in 2020, and then above $1 trillion annually from 2022 until the end of days. Is this really the path of fiscal righteousness?”…
“Meanwhile, the debt burden gets worse, not better. Our debt as a share of national output skyrockets from 72 percent to just shy of 80 percent of GDP within a decade. Obamacare contributes to this thanks to the massive costs of Medicaid expansion and driving an expected 2 million people from the workforce. The budget deal that relaxed the budget caps and sequestration also has ratcheted up spending in every future year.”
Bernstein confused “deficit” with “debt.” Sharpton, of course, is too obtuse to know the difference -- and wouldn’t challenge Bernstein if he did. Whether Bernstein intentionally confused the two, however, remains an open question.
Yes, Mr. Bernstein the “deficit” is down -- for now and only after a spending gush that has only temporarily slowed down. Again, Ryan said nothing about the deficit. Where are the “fact-checkers” when you need them? Ryan was addressing the explosion in debt under Obama.
The future numbers for both debt AND deficit look abysmal.
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Saturday, April 12, 2014
By Leslie Stahl, Apr. 11, 2014, CBS News, 60 Minutes
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — President Barack Obama is coming to New York City Friday to address the Rev. Al Sharpton‘s National Action Network.
The visit comes days after revelations surfaced that Sharpton worked with the FBI. The topic also came up in a 2011 ’60 Minutes’ interview with Lesley Stahl weeks before the debut of “Politics Nation.”
In outtakes posted from that interview, Stahl asked Sharpton if he was an FBI informant.
The exchange got testy at times when Stahl continued to question Rev. Al about his “informant” role.
Stahl: When you were in your 20s, you were an informant for the FBI.
Sharpton: No, well it’s according to how you define informant but go ahead.
Stahl: Tell us about that. How do you define it? What was that?
Sharpton: They tried to entrap me. When it didn’t work…
Stahl: The FBI you mean?
Sharpton: Yeah. And when it didn’t work, I was working on some things about crack houses at the time and we ended up working on some drug cases and they were also doing a boxing investigation and they talked to me a lot about boxing and what I knew about Don King.
Read the full story: www.newyork.cbslocal.com
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Wednesday, April 9, 2014
By William Kevin Stoos, Apr. 8, 2014, Canadafreepress.com
-- Satire
The “Reverend” Al Sharpton: professional race baiter,
creator of the infamous “Tawana Brawley scandal” in which he accused several
white law enforcement officers and a prosecutor of raping a young black girl
(which eventually led to a substantial defamation verdict against him and
others because of his false allegations); MSNBC “commentator” whose show
“Racial Politics Nation” caused him to be named “Reporter Least Likely to
String Two Intelligible Sentences End to End” by The Society for the
Preservation of English, and who famously pronounced “white Hispanic” George
Zimmerman guilty of murder before he was even charged, recently received some
more unexpected notoriety. And Hugh Betcha, Ace Reporter, Head of the
StoosViews International Media Conglomerate Science Division, and frequent
contributor to the powerful Canada Free Press, was there.
Hugh, named “Outstanding Science Reporter, 2013” by the Al
Gore Save the Planet Foundation, “Reporter We Would Most Like to Hang With,
2013” by CNN and frequent visitor to the White House–a man who is respected on
each side of the aisle in Washington, D.C. and holder of doctoral degrees in
Physics and Chemistry—received an unusual call from his old friend Dr. A. Tom
McPardical–Chief of the Physics Division of the respected Livermore National
Laboratories in California—regarding an earth-shaking scientific discovery.
Read the full story: www.canadafreepress.com
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