Rick Santelli's Chicago Tea Party |
- Tea Party = Hezbollah?
- Palin to Speak in Iowa in September
- Lord of the Zings: Tea Partiers Slam McCain Over ‘Hobbit’ Reference
- Fuel economy deal pushes average to 54.5 mpg
| Posted: 28 Jul 2011 02:41 PM PDT By Thomas L. Friedman, sacbee.com There is only one thing worse than Republicans and Democrats failing to agree to lift the debt ceiling, and that is lifting the debt ceiling without a well- thought-out plan and with hasty cuts totaling trillions of dollars over a decade. Maybe you can grow without a plan. But if you cut without a plan, you will almost surely hit an artery or a bone that could really debilitate you. That, I fear, is where we are heading. What would it look like if we were approaching this problem properly? For starters, two years ago Congress and the Obama administration would have collaborated on a series of hearings under the heading: “What world are we living in?” They would have included a broad range of business, education and technology leaders testifying about what are the major trends and opportunities that are expected to shape the job market for the next decade. Surely, the hyperconnecting of the world, the intensification of globalization and outsourcing, the challenges of energy and climate and the growing automation of the work space that is rapidly increasing productivity with fewer workers all would have figured prominently. Then we would have put together “The National Commission for 21st Century America,” with this assignment: Given these big trends, what will America need to thrive in this world and how should we adapt our unique formula for success? Yes, we have developed such a formula over the course of American history, and it is built on five pillars: educating the workforce up to and beyond whatever technology demands; building the world’s best infrastructure of ports, roads and telecommunications; attracting the world’s most dynamic and high-IQ immigrants to enrich our universities and start new businesses; putting together the best regulations to incentivize risk-taking while curbing recklessness (not always perfectly); and funding research to push out the boundaries of science and then let American innovators and venture capitalists pluck off the most promising new ideas for new business. Only after we had done all that would we then sit down with a blank sheet of paper and figure tax hikes and program cuts. After all, “We don’t just need a plan for regaining American solvency. We need a plan for maintaining American greatness and sustaining the American dream for another generation,” argues Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy expert (and co-author with me of a forthcoming book). “Such a plan requires cutting, taxing and spending. It requires cutting because we have made promises to ourselves on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that we cannot keep without reforming each of them.” But we cannot possibly generate the savings — or the new investments — by just taking funds from these social programs and shredding the social safety nets, adds Mandelbaum. “That would trigger a backlash against free-market capitalism.” To read more, visit: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/07/28/3799544/thomas-l-friedman-tea-party-has.html |
| Palin to Speak in Iowa in September Posted: 28 Jul 2011 02:37 PM PDT By TRIP GABRIEL, Thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com Sarah Palin's flirtation with running for president was renewed Thursday with the announcement that she would visit Iowa over the Labor Day weekend to speak to a Tea Party group. The Tea Party of America, a recently formed political action committee, said Ms. Palin would address its "Restoring America" rally on Sept. 3. It quoted her in a press release as saying that she looked forward to speaking to "independent liberty-loving Americans'' at the rally in Waukee, outside Des Moines. Ms. Palin, who earlier this summer toured the East Coast in a bus and dropped into Pella, Iowa, for the premiere of a film about her, is certain to draw a large crowd. "She has such an appeal that just her name alone attracts people,'' said Charlie Gruschow, a founder of Tea Party of America. "Whether or not they would vote for her I honestly don't know.'' The state Republican Party decided last weekend not to include Ms. Palin, the former Alaska governor, as an unannounced candidate on the ballot of its much-watched straw poll in Ames next month. And she has taken almost none of the conventional steps normally taken by a candidate who hopes to be competitive in the Iowa caucuses early next year. She has indicated, most recently on Fox News, that her time frame for a decision was "August and September.'' "It seems like it'll be a pretty important speech in Des Moines,'' said Peter Singleton, an organizer unaffiliated with Ms. Palin who is rallying support for her in Iowa. He put Mr. Gruschow's group in touch with aides at SarahPAC, Ms. Palin's official political group. Mr. Gruschow, who until recently ran Herman Cain's campaign in Iowa, contacted Ms. Palin's aides more or less out of the blue. "I don't know if we were lucky or it's the credibility I had or she just wanted to be in Iowa again,'' he said. To read more, visit: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/28/palin-to-speak-in-iowa-in-september/ |
| Lord of the Zings: Tea Partiers Slam McCain Over ‘Hobbit’ Reference Posted: 28 Jul 2011 02:32 PM PDT From: FOXNews.com Sen. John McCain is attracting the ire of Tea Party conservatives, including a couple prominent ex-Senate candidates, after ridiculing them as “hobbits” during a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday. The Arizona senator and former GOP presidential nominee singled out both Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell, Tea Party-backed candidates who ran last year for Senate in Nevada and Delaware respectively. Reading from a Wall Street Journal editorial that mocked Tea Party supporters as “hobbits” and criticized Tea Party-backed lawmakers for holding out on a debt-ceiling increase, McCain said: “This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into GOP Senate nominees.” Angle issued a searing statement in response on Thursday, calling it “regrettable” that the senator has resorted to “name-calling.” “Ironically, this man campaigned for TEA Party support in his last re-election, but now throws Christine O’Donnell and I into the harbor with Sarah Palin,” Angle said, adding that “as in the fable, it is the hobbits who are the heroes and save the land.” Further, Angle mocked McCain for borrowing lines from a newspaper editorial, instead of writing the Tolkien-laced critique himself. To read more, visit: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/07/28/angle-odonnell-slam-mccain-over-tea-party-hobbits-speech/ |
| Fuel economy deal pushes average to 54.5 mpg Posted: 28 Jul 2011 02:27 PM PDT By Martin LaMonica, cnetnews.com The White House and automakers are expected to announce an agreement tomorrow to raise the fuel economy for vehicles, paving the way for a steady increase in mileage ratings. According to published reports, a compromise has been largely worked out between the White House and automakers to set efficiency standards from 2017 to 2025. The agreement would require mileage to average 54.5 miles per gallon for passenger cars and light trucks by 2025, according to a Washington Post report. It’s a significant step up from the 2016 level where cars and light trucks must average 31.4 miles per gallon or 250 grams per mile of carbon dioxide equivalent. This year, the fuel economy of all 2011 cars and trucks sold has to average out to 27.3 miles per gallon. The agreement is structured so that each automaker will be given targets that reflect the types of vehicles it sells where very efficiency vehicles will offset gas guzzlers, according to a CNN report. Automakers that sell large trucks and SUVs as well as more efficient compacts and hybrids might have a different target than a company that only sells small cars, the report said. The corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards are structured so that cars will need an average 5 percent improvement each year from 2017 to 2025, while trucks would need to go up 3.5 percent through 2012, according to the CNN report. The expected compromise falls short of the 60 mpg standard that environmental groups were advocating. But passage would set a national standard and create more certainty for industry in the near term. The deal builds off a landmark agreement that the Obama administration worked out two years ago to create a single national standard, rather than have automakers comply with federal, California, and EPA mandates. To read more, visit: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20084947-54/fuel-economy-deal-pushes-average-to-54.5-mpg/ |
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