http://beforeitsnews.com/military/2013/02/5-nuclear-carriers-into-harbor-for-routine-inspections-this-is-definitely-a-problem-2449952.html
From: Victoria Baer
Sent: Monday, February 25, 2013 12:59 PM
To: victoria
Subject: 5 nuclear carriers into harbor for "routine" (?) inspections...
Chart by House Armed Services Committee
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/285419-sequester-here-to-stay
President Obama has invited congressional leaders to meet at the White House on Friday, the same day $85 billion in automatic cuts are due to begin. However, congressional sources do not anticipate a deal at that gathering or any time soon.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/02/28/184471/as-sequestration-nears-federal.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/maps-sequester-education-budget-cuts-california-florida-texas-new-york-2013-2
There are just two days to go until automatic, across-the-board budget cuts kick in, and if they do, education is going to get hit hard.
and.....
Update: The plot thickens.
But unless both sides get lucky and the sequester produces serious bad photo images (airport lines? parents stuck due to the cessation of federally funded daycare? noise about tax refunds arriving later than usual? slashing of support for low income groups, like rental assistance programs and Head Start? ) it likely be at least a month before there is any economic effect (which means at least another three weeks beyond that before a deal is agreed upon).
Even then, the blowback may not support the political classes’ desire for a middle-class fleecing deal. For instance, in the extract above, the Republican strategists seem to believe the public thinks reducing military spending is bad. In fact, polls show the public overwhelmingly favors curbing military spending over cutting Social Security and Medicare. And ironically if the armed forces cut the use of contractors (which is where reductions are expected to fall most heavily) those might also fall on overseas activities, which would blunt the domestic economic impact. And what if, mirabile dictu, the public starts realizing that government provides programs they like (this was one of the ironies Matt Taibbi tore into with Tea Partiers, that they were against government yet firmly dependent on it, with many members on Medicare)? If that idea began to dawn on more of the public, it could have meaningful long-term ramifications.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hopeful. Plus both parties have a ready excuse to shift tactics and messaging. A lot of government funding is reapproved annually, and the deadline is March 27. That gives both sides the opportunity to ease the pain on specific groups and programs that they think are being pinched too hard. But the two camps are acting as if they can get an outcome they want, when they are putting a new experiment in play. In other words, I’d expect what they don’t seem to be anticipating, which is the unexpected.
Below, Bill Black provides an important piece of the puzzle, namely, why Obama is so keen on the sequester.
By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Jointly posted with Benzinga
We are in the midst of the blame game about the “Sequester.” I wrote last year about the fact that President Obama had twice blocked Republican efforts to remove the Sequester. President Obama went so far as to issue a veto threat to block the second effort. I found contemporaneous reportage on the President’s efforts to preserve the Sequester – and the articles were not critical of those efforts. I found no contemporaneous rebuttal by the administration of these reports.
In fairness, the Republicans did “start it” by threatening to cause the U.S. to default on its debts in 2011. Their actions were grotesquely irresponsible and anti-American. It is also true that the Republicans often supported the Sequester.
The point I was making was not who should be blamed for the insanity of the Sequester. The answer was always both political parties. I raised the President’s efforts to save the Sequester because they revealed his real preferences. Those of us who teach economics explain to our students that what people say about their preferences is not as reliable as how they act. Their actions reveal their true preferences. President Obama has always known that the Sequester is terrible public policy. He has blasted it as a “manufactured crisis.”
the administration has stated publicly the three reasons this is so. First, the Sequester represents self-destructive austerity. Indeed, it would be the fourth act of self-destructive austerity. The August 2011 budget deal already sharply limited spending and the January 2013 “fiscal cliff” deal raised taxes on the wealthiest Americans and restored the full payroll tax. The cumulative effect of these three forms of austerity has already strangled the (modest) recovery – adding the Sequester, particularly given the Eurozone’s austerity-induced recession, could tip us into a gratuitous recession.
Second, the Sequester is a particularly stupid way to inflict austerity on a Nation. It is a bad combination of across the board cuts – but with many exemptions that lead to the cuts concentrating heavily in many vital programs that are already badly underfunded.
Third, conservatives purport to believe in what Paul Krugman derisively calls the “confidence fairy.” They assert that uncertainty explains our inadequate demand. The absurd, self-destructive austerity deals induced or threatened by the Sequester have caused recurrent crises and maximized uncertainty. They also show that the U.S. is not ready for prime time.
When he acted to save the Sequester, Obama proved that he preferred the Sequester to the alternative. When the alternative threatened by the Republicans was causing a default on the U.S. debt (by refusing to increase the debt limit), one could understand Obama’s preference (though even there I would have called the Republican bluff). The Republicans, however, had extended the debt limit in both of the cases that President Obama acted to save the Sequester in 2011.
Update – 5 Nuclear Carriers Into Harbor For “Routine” (?) Inspections…’This Is Definitely A Problem’
Monday, February 25, 2013 14:15
The aircraft carriers USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69), USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), USS Enterprise (CVN 65), USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75), and USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) are in port at Naval Station Norfolk, Va. US Navy Photo
UPDATE : More intel that WE CAN TRUST on 5 nuclear carriers into harbor for "routine" (?) inspections...
From:Victoria Baer -
Sent:Monday, February 25, 2013 3:55 PM
To:
Subject:More intel that WE CAN TRUST on 5 nuclear carriers into harbor for "routine" (?) inspections...
Importance:High
Sent:Monday, February 25, 2013 3:55 PM
To:
Subject:More intel that WE CAN TRUST on 5 nuclear carriers into harbor for "routine" (?) inspections...
Importance:High
Here is some feedback that I receive that I trust:
Victoria:
I was in the U.S .military for 30 years and the U.S. Navy for 24 years and retired out of Norfolk as an Intel Officer.
I can tell you, having lived in Virginia Beach for 12 of those years (30 minutes to the Naval Base) that
having five U.S. carriers in port at one time,IS CREATING THE PERFECT TARGET.
Such a move is insanity....unless you are TRYING to 'set up the Navy' for a missile attack.
Now, who what 'American' president or CINCUSNAV would EVER do such a thing.
Three guesses and the first two just don't count.
Hint: He has three vowels in his name and if you rearrange the letters they spell USURPER.
Dr. Tom (LCDR, USN-ret)
Victoria, don't know if you are aware but this problem is compounded by the fact that the Thimble Shoals channel is about a 45 minute to an hour transit to open ocean from NOB Norfolk. Thimble Shoals channel can be easily blocked with sunken ships, bottling up every other ship in port. At least at Pearl Harbor, ships not sunk or damaged could escape to open ocean, like they could from Mayport. Why don't they put a nuc carrier here? Hmmmm.
JK
Victoria,
This was verified by two people who do not know each other and who each have sons serving in the Navy, one each on two of these carriers.
Mark
Sent: Monday, February 25, 2013 12:59 PM
To: victoria
Subject: 5 nuclear carriers into harbor for "routine" (?) inspections...
This is definitely a problem….
Victoria Baer
This is absurd! Your community organizer at work!
Send to everyone!
and......
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/27/us-usa-fiscal-woodward-idUSBRE91Q11620130227
(Reuters) - Journalist Bob Woodward on Wednesday criticized Barack Obama's handling of the automatic U.S. budget cuts set to take effect this week, calling the president's decision to hold back on military deployments "madness."
His comments continued what has become a running dispute between Woodward, perhaps the country's best-known print journalist, and the Democratic White House over who is responsible for the across-the-board cuts scheduled to begin on Friday.
Last week, Woodward published an opinion piece in the Washington Post - where he is an associate editor - saying the administration was "wrong" to blame the cuts on Republicans.
That drew retorts from White House press secretary Jay Carney, who in posts on Twitter and later in comments to reporters blamed the budget stalemate on Republican opposition to including increased revenues in any deal to replace the cuts.
The $85 billion across-the-board budget cuts were mandated by Congress and the White House as part of the August 2011 deal to avoid a government default. The reductions are split between defense spending and domestic programs.
Woodward, who first gained fame in the 1970s from exposing the Watergate scandal during the administration of President Richard Nixon, wrote a detailed account in his 2012 book, "The Price of Politics," of the August 2011 deal that led to the cuts.
On Wednesday he attacked Obama for drawing national security into the budget debate.
"So we now have the president going out (saying) 'Because of this piece of paper and this agreement, I can't do what I need to do to protect the country.' That's a kind of madness that I haven't seen in a long time," Woodward told MSNBC on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Obama warned of threats to Navy readiness in a visit to the Newport News Shipbuilding shipyard in Virginia, where maintenance to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln has been delayed by the budget crisis.
Earlier this month, the Pentagon said it was delaying deployment of another carrier, the USS Harry Truman, to the Middle East because of funding.
Obama's decision to drag the military into the budget fight likely would not have happened in previous administrations, Republican or Democratic, Woodward added on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program.
and......
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/budget-cuts-force-army-and-marines-cut-more-200000-troops_704798.html
Budget Cuts Could Force Army and Marines to Cut 200,000 Troops
5:04 PM, FEB 27, 2013 • BY JOHN MCCORMACK
Many conservatives and Republicans are greeting the looming sequestration spending cuts with a collective yawn. "The much-ballyhooed 'sequester' is a cut of $85 billion in a nearly $4 trillion federal budget. Good, let’s do it," writes one contributor to National Review Online's symposium on sequestration.
It's true that sequestration is a tiny cut to total federal spending. But it is also true that sequestration is a major cut to defense spending.
According to the House Armed Services Committee, the 2011 Budget Control Act (the law that imposed both spending caps and sequestration) will force the Marine Corps to shrink by 25 percent--from 202,000 Marines to 145,000. What's more, "by the end of calendar year 2013, less than half of our ground units will be trained to the minimum readiness level required for deployment," Marine Corps commandant James Amos testified to Congress this month.
The Army will lose 143,000 soldiers, dropping from an end strength of 569,000 troops to 426,000. According to Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno's congressional testimony, 78 percent of Army units will "significantly curtail training" because of sequestration. The Navy will delay the deployment of an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf. And 800,000 civilian employees working for the Department of Defense will face a 20 percent pay cut. These are just a few of the ways the military will cope with sequestration.
The problem is not simply that sequestration is designed poorly, which it is. The problem is not simply that President Obama is using scare tactics to beat down House Republicans, which he is. The big problem is the sheer size of the Budget Control Act's cuts to defense: roughly $1 trillion over ten years.
Chart by House Armed Services Committee
Think it's easy to find that much fat to cut from the military? It's not. Consider the following:
Senator Tom Coburn released the most aggressive deficit reduction plan of any member of Congress two years ago before the Budget Control Act was passed. The Oklahoma senator's "Back in Black" plan outlined $9 trillion in deficit reduction--nearly twice the amount of deficit reduction in the House GOP budget written by Congressman Paul Ryan. If there was a program that could be cut, Coburn proposed cutting it.
And how much did Coburn propose cutting from defense? The same amount later cut by the the Budget Control Act's budget caps and sequestration: $1 trillion over ten years.
To Coburn's credit, he got very specific about what he would cut. Here are a few examples:
--shutting down elementary schools on military bases--make veterans pay more for health care under TRICARE--cancel the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter for the Navy and Marines and replace it with the F/A-18 Super Hornet--eliminate one of the country's 11 aircraft carriers--shrink the Army by 65,000 soldiers
If the "smart" way to spend $1 trillion less on defense involves cutting this much muscle from the military, it is no surprise that sequestration's arbitrary across-the-board cuts are even worse.
So the sequestration fight doesn't present Republicans with any good options. House Republicans passed bills in the last Congress to redistribute sequestration's nearly $500 billion in defense cuts to other programs, but President Obama and Senate Democrats say they're not willing to negotiate a "cuts-only" deal. They want another big tax hike on top of the $600 billion tax hike they got on January 1 in the "fiscal cliff" deal. And they want to keep most of the defense cuts. What they really want, most of all, is to break the Republican party and win back the House in 2014.
Some Republicans have floated the idea of giving Obama more flexibility in implementing sequestration, but that carries its own risks. "If you just give the president a blank check," one congressional aide told me, "he will force the military to do things that are in the long-term very unwise ... base closures, divesting of significant naval assets, divesting of significant aircraft and drone assets."
Another option for Republicans is to call for suspending the sequester in whole or in part. That runs counter to the mantra of many House conservatives that the "only thing worse than defense cuts is no cuts at all." But is that really true? It would be one thing to cut a trillion dollars from the military as part of a plan to avert a debt crisis, as Senator Tom Coburn proposed. But weakening the military without solving the debt problem? Without even making a serious dent in it? What good is that? What will happen to an already-weakened military if and when a debt crisis actually hits?
Sequester cuts are here to stay
- 02/28/13 05:00 AM ET
Lawmakers and aides say they do not expect Congress to turn off budget sequestration before April and that negotiations to freeze the automatic spending cuts could drag into May or beyond.
Over the last few weeks, there has been increased speculation that the sequester would go into effect Friday but be addressed in a March deal to keep the government funded.
Don’t bet on it.
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), a member of the Finance Committee, predicted sequestration would last through the end of the year.
“Are we going to roll back the size of the cuts? No. I can promise you that,” said Burr.
President Obama has invited congressional leaders to meet at the White House on Friday, the same day $85 billion in automatic cuts are due to begin. However, congressional sources do not anticipate a deal at that gathering or any time soon.
“It’s going to be one last attempt at trying to convince Republicans of the need for a balanced approach to sequester before the deadline,” said a senior Senate Democratic aide.
Earlier this month, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) clearly indicated he was not going to sign off on a last-minute deal: “Read my lips: I’m not interested in an 11th-hour negotiation.”
Meanwhile, the White House is backing off its prior warnings that the sequester will strike a quick and devastating blow to the economy.
A senior GOP aide on Wednesday highlighted news reports that Obama’s political advisers now concede the cuts will not immediately disrupt federal services, managing public expectations in the wake of dire warnings.
Republicans have accused the administration of using scare tactics on the sequester instead of spending time trying to find a bipartisan remedy.
While lawmakers had initially eyed a continuing resolution (CR) or appropriations omnibus bill as a vehicle for halting the sequester by March 27, that now appears unlikely.
Obama has signaled to Democratic allies in Congress that his priority is to first take a potential government shutdown off the table. He would prefer to deal with the sequester separately, said Senate Democratic aides.
Obama and his political team appear confident a growing public backlash over the sequester will pressure GOP leaders to agree to raise taxes to prevent the across-the-board cuts.
“We remain hopeful that Republicans will understand the need to compromise and that compromise has balance at its essence,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters Wednesday.
Policy experts, however, say the sky won’t fall on Friday, and that the public may not notice the impact for weeks or even months.
“It’s not like the expiration of a continuing resolution where the government shuts down. It’s a lot more like a slow-motion train wreck,” said Loren Adler, senior policy analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “The key takeaway is on March 1 or March 5, no doors will be closed, no lights will be turned off. It will take a little while for these cuts to take effect.”
Most unpaid furloughs of government workers will not begin until April, and Defense Department employees will not see furloughs until the end of that month.
Passenger screenings at airports will suffer little effect, as well — at least initially.
“The [Transportation Security Administration] is going to be pretty much the same for most of March,” said Scott Lilly, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “I have found very few agencies that are going to make changes in March.”
Lilly said the effects of the sequester are unlikely to occur next month.
“Is it going to be enough to turn some of the hard heads around in the first couple weeks of March? Probably not. It’s going to take longer,” he said.
Obama has given no indication that he would veto any government funding measure that would continue sequestration, and Democratic leaders will not take a stand without backing from the White House.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he will consider legislation to fund government programs beyond the end of March.
“Anything the Speaker has regarding the CR or an omnibus, I’m anxious to see it,” Reid told reporters. “I met with him a day or two before we had our break. We had a nice conversation.”
Several influential House conservatives said Wednesday they would support their leadership’s plan to pass a six-month continuing resolution that would include the $85 billion in sequester cuts.
Senate Democratic leadership officials are looking at the Senate budget resolution as a possible tool to eradicate the sequester. They argue that deficit-reduction measures proposed by their budget blueprint could justify eliminating it.
“I think the next step is going to be we’re going to have a budget on the floor maybe by the third week of March,” said Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska).
But Begich said he’s not optimistic the sequester will be solved anytime soon.
“Anything’s possible, but there’s not a mechanism yet,” he said.
Democrats acknowledge a budget plan passed by the Senate alone would not be sufficient. Only a bicameral budget resolution negotiated by the Senate Democratic and House Republican leaders could provide enough assurance of future savings to replace the sequester.
“You would have to have a bipartisan, bicameral budget resolution to fix the sequester,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee. “It would be a long shot. I won’t say it’s impossible.”
Negotiations to forge a joint resolution with House Republicans could easily drag into the summer.
The Senate will vote Thursday on a Democratic proposal to stop the sequester and a Republican plan to give Obama more flexibility to manage its effects. Both are expected to fail to reach the required 60-vote threshold. McConnell has asked for votes on additional GOP-sponsored proposals, but Reid has so far rejected those requests.
Democrats have insisted any plan to replace the sequester be evenly balanced between spending cuts and tax increases. Republicans have staunchly refused to raise any more in taxes.
Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Appropriations Committee, said he does not see a clear path forward after sequestration takes effect Friday.
and.......
By Lindsay Wise | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — As a single dad with seven kids living at home, Bill Blevins is used to pinching every penny.
The 48-year-old building engineer at the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing hasn’t had a cost-of-living pay raise in more than two years, even as his rent and insurance premiums went up. Now he and other federal workers in Washington and across the country are bracing for possible unpaid furloughs as part of an $85 billion reduction in federal spending. Known as sequestration, the automatic, across-the-board budget cuts are scheduled to kick in unless Congress and the White House can reach a compromise by Friday.
Although Blevins doesn’t expect furloughs to hit his office right away – so far the bureau says it plans to operate as usual – the uncertainty makes him take his ulcer medicine a little more often these days.
“I’ll have to keep a bottle nearby” if furloughs hit, he joked.
“Rent’s due the first of the month whether I’m furloughed or not,” said Blevins, who commutes from his home in Culpeper, Va., to his night shift job in Washington. “You just really have to squeeze a little more out of each dollar. That’s just what it comes down to.”
All across the D.C. area and the rest of the country, federal workers like Blevins are having tense, belt-tightening conversations with spouses, kids and co-workers. They’re canceling little luxuries such as cable, cellphone service, restaurants and movie nights, putting off long-planned vacations and searching for second jobs. Some are thinking about raiding their 401(k)s for emergency cash.
It’s lost on none of them that they’re being forced to slash their own families’ budgets because politicians can’t agree on how to balance the federal budget.
It’s lost on none of them that they’re being forced to slash their own families’ budgets because politicians can’t agree on how to balance the federal budget.
“They expect us to do our jobs, so we expect them to do their jobs,” said Marsha Hayden, a 61-year-old microbiologist with the Food and Drug Administration from Adelphi, Md.
“I am a registered Republican. However, I blame the Republican Party for this,” said Gregory Russell, a 48-year-old federal firefighter at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. Russell calculates he’d lose about $1,200 a month – about 20 percent of his pay – if he gets furloughed.
“I’m tired of people being obstinate,” he said. “Sit down at the table, listen to the other side, everybody give a little compromise back and forth and get it resolved. Instead, we spend a lot of time doing showmanship about the other side when they could actually be doing something to resolve it.”
The mounting dread and anger are particularly palpable in the Washington metropolitan area, where federal spending added up to $170 billion last year – 39 percent of the local economy.
The Maryland, Virginia and D.C. region is home to 4.7 percent of the U.S. population but it receives 15 percent of defense spending and 21 percent of federal payroll and procurement dollars, said Stephen Fuller, the director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University’s School of Public Policy.
“We’re less diversified than the other big metro areas,” Fuller said. “It’s a government town.”
Government money may have shielded the region from the worst of the recession, but that cushion has disappeared, cutting the local economy’s growth rate in half the past two years, Fuller said. Federal spending on contracting has dropped more than 8 percent since its peak in 2010, and the area’s federal workforce shrank by 8,700 in the same period, he said.
But if sequestration has become an angst-ridden buzzword in the Washington area, the awkward term isn’t exactly rolling off people’s tongues elsewhere in the United States.
Only 18 percent of Americans say they understand “very well” what would happen as a consequence of the budget cuts, according to a Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll released this week. Although the topic has seized Washington’s attention for weeks, just one in four Americans say they’re following the debate in the nation’s capital very closely.
Gretchen Carreiro, a 41-year-old program specialist for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said it felt as if the rest of the country had little sympathy for federal workers’ plight.
“It’s like your job doesn’t even count. It’s like you should be doing it for free because you work for the taxpayers, so you kind of feel like it’s a slap in the face,” she said.
Carreiro said her family already lived paycheck to paycheck, and she worries that she won’t be able to pay the bills if she’s forced to take unpaid days off. “I have no clue what we would do if the mortgage companies didn’t work with us, if our car loan companies didn’t work with us. We’d lose everything,” said Carreiro, who lives with her husband and two children in Manassas, Va. "We’re just praying, you know?”
What really rankles, she said, is that members of Congress don’t face the same pay cuts as federal workers.
“I think it’s ridiculous,” she said. “They’re still going to get their paychecks, and I feel like they’re using us as scapegoat.”
At the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel, not far from the National Mall, the threat of furloughs was the number one topic of discussion Wednesday at a conference of the National Treasury Employees Union, an independent federal union that represents 150,000 employees in 31 government agencies and departments.
In a survey of union members in late February, 82 percent said that if furloughs were implemented they’d have difficulty paying for the basics, such as rent, mortgage, utilities and food. Sixty-three percent expected to take money out of savings or retirement, and 29 percent said they’d have a hard time paying for child care or tuition.
Internal Revenue Service employee Joe Gaston’s family might take a double hit, because his wife works for the Department of Defense. He and other IRS workers were just told to expect five to seven furlough days before September.
“It’s a difficult proposition right now because we don’t know what’s ahead of us,” said Gaston, 56, of Alexandria, Va. “You have a mortgage to pay, and they do not accept that you send 90 percent of the payment.”
Keith McGlawn, an IT technician with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said he expected 14 days off without pay before Sept. 30, which amounts to a 10 percent pay cut. McGlawn already has started looking for a second, part-time job to make up for the lost income.
“I’m trying to stay ahead of the curve instead of being behind it,” said McGlawn, 46, of Manassas, Va. He described the mood among colleagues at his agency as panic.
The growing anxiety over furloughs isn’t limited to the D.C. area. The vast majority – 85 percent – of federal workers live far outside the Beltway, in states where they work at law enforcement agencies, in food plants, military bases, national parks, veterans’ hospitals and federal branch offices.
In Westminster, Mass., William “Bud” Taylor II woke up at 3 a.m. the other day, thinking, “How the hell am I going to handle this?”
The 56-year-old project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said he’d done the math and if he were furloughed as expected for one day a week from April to September, he’d lose 20 percent of his pay. His expenses will exceed his income.
“Over the last couple weeks it has just been sheer terror,” he said.
“I can’t believe this is real and these idiots aren’t going to do anything about it,” he said, referring to Congress. “They’re just going to point fingers at each other.”
and......
These Maps Show How Schools Are Going To Get Totally Slammed By Sequestration
 |
The cuts will roll back Education Department funding below what it was in 2004. But since 2004, the number of students enrolled in public pre-K-12 and all post secondary education programs have gone up by 5.8 million, and the cost of providing public K-12 schooling has gone up 36 percent, according to a recent report from the National Education Association (NEA).
In this report, the NEA analyzed data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and calculated exactly how much funding specific educational programs stand to lose, how many students will be affected, and how many jobs would potentially be lost as a result of these budget cuts. Business Insider took this data and created a series of interactive maps that show you exactly how the sequester would affect the education system in each state.
The report claims that, if the cuts kick in, 7.4 million students would be affected — which means that either the quality of education they receive will go down or be eliminated entirely, The funding cuts could also lead to 49,365 potential job losses.
But not all states will feel the hit equally. With more than $100 million cuts to their education budget, the states that will be most affected by the sequester are California, Texas, Illinois, New York and Florida.
and.....
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/02/27/under-the-bus-homeland-security-official-resigns-over-release-of-illegals-from-detention-centers/
Under the bus: Homeland Security official resigns over release of illegals from detention centers;Update: Retiring, not “resigning”
POSTED AT 4:03 PM ON FEBRUARY 27, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT
The Associated Press has learned that the Homeland Security Department official in charge of the agency’s immigration enforcement and removal operations has resigned after hundreds of illegal immigrants were released from jails because of government spending cuts.In an email obtained Wednesday by the AP, Gary Mead told coworkers that he was leaving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the end of April. Mead is the head of enforcement and removal operations at ICE.
So, even though releasing the detainees very conveniently served Obama’s goal of increasing the pants-wetting over sequester cuts while also very conveniently making the amnesty fans in his base happy, this was just Gary Mead going rogue without any direction from the White House. And Obama’s so mad about it that Mead has to clear out his desk immediately two months from now. Let me gently suggest that in the unlikely event Mead really did order this on his own, perhaps he was just acting in the spirit of his boss, who not so subtly suggested a few days ago that if a deal wasn’t reached on cuts ASAP then border security might have to go bye-bye for awhile.
But let’s not join in the scapegoating. Is there any reason why the White House, having quietly ordered Mead to turn up the pressure on Republicans by releasing a few illegals yesterday, would suddenly reverse course and pull the plug on him today? Yes, actually. Check out who the paper of record used as an example in its story yesterday about the illegals who were released:
Among those released in the past week was Anthony Orlando Williams, 52, a Jamaican immigrant who spent nearly three years in a detention center in Georgia. “I’m good, man,” he said. “I’m free.”Mr. Williams, in a telephone interview from Stone Mountain, Ga., said he became an illegal immigrant when he overstayed a visa in 1991. He was detained in 2010 by a sheriff’s deputy in Gwinnett County, Ga., when it was discovered that he had violated probation for a conviction in 2005 of simple assault, simple battery and child abuse, charges that sprung from a domestic dispute with his wife at the time. He was transferred to ICE custody and has been fighting a deportation order with the help of Families for Freedom, an immigrant support group in New York.
Obama’s willing to take a political risk in releasing nonviolent illegals. He’s not willing to take the risk of releasing child abusers. The public might blame the GOP for the former vis-a-vis putting budget pressure on DHS, but they won’t give the chief executive a pass for not being more discriminating in choosing which illegals go free. Somebody had to pay. Congrats, Gary Mead.
Oh, incidentally, this isn’t the only lie the White House is telling about sequester cuts. Read WaPo’s fact-check of Arne Duncan claiming that teachers are already getting pink slips.
Who told the AP that Mead was resigning over the release of illegals? And if he isn’t, yet the White House still insists it didn’t order the release, then who from DHS is getting fired?
Update: Someone just tweeted at me that maybe Mead didn’t resign as a scapegoat; maybe he resigned in protest of the administration’s decision to release the illegals. That’s an interesting theory but it’s contradicted by the last update, assuming the claim about Mead having told staff about this weeks ago is true. Again: Who ordered this? Did no one think to run it by the White House before doing it given the national attention it was sure to receive?
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/why-obama-refuses-to-kill-the-sequester.html
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2013
Republicans believe they can stay united by accusing Mr. Obama of campaigning rather than negotiating and reminding people that they have backed legislation to replace the cuts to defense programs with nondefense cuts. They say they won’t bend to Mr. Obama’s demand for new tax revenue and that the public supports their goal of reducing the deficit.Both sides seem remarkably confident in their contradictory views, which suggests that there is more here than meets the eye. Notice how Bowles and Simpson have been hauled out of mothballs, and how the bipartisan plutocratic Fix the Debt messaging has ratcheted up? As the Democrats and Republicans play Punch and Judy with each other, the real effort will be to come up with a backroom deal on cutting Social Security and Medicare enticing enough to get the Republicans to persuade their recalcitrant members to accept some token tax increases to secure a much bigger prize.
But unless both sides get lucky and the sequester produces serious bad photo images (airport lines? parents stuck due to the cessation of federally funded daycare? noise about tax refunds arriving later than usual? slashing of support for low income groups, like rental assistance programs and Head Start? ) it likely be at least a month before there is any economic effect (which means at least another three weeks beyond that before a deal is agreed upon).
Even then, the blowback may not support the political classes’ desire for a middle-class fleecing deal. For instance, in the extract above, the Republican strategists seem to believe the public thinks reducing military spending is bad. In fact, polls show the public overwhelmingly favors curbing military spending over cutting Social Security and Medicare. And ironically if the armed forces cut the use of contractors (which is where reductions are expected to fall most heavily) those might also fall on overseas activities, which would blunt the domestic economic impact. And what if, mirabile dictu, the public starts realizing that government provides programs they like (this was one of the ironies Matt Taibbi tore into with Tea Partiers, that they were against government yet firmly dependent on it, with many members on Medicare)? If that idea began to dawn on more of the public, it could have meaningful long-term ramifications.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hopeful. Plus both parties have a ready excuse to shift tactics and messaging. A lot of government funding is reapproved annually, and the deadline is March 27. That gives both sides the opportunity to ease the pain on specific groups and programs that they think are being pinched too hard. But the two camps are acting as if they can get an outcome they want, when they are putting a new experiment in play. In other words, I’d expect what they don’t seem to be anticipating, which is the unexpected.
Below, Bill Black provides an important piece of the puzzle, namely, why Obama is so keen on the sequester.
By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Jointly posted with Benzinga
We are in the midst of the blame game about the “Sequester.” I wrote last year about the fact that President Obama had twice blocked Republican efforts to remove the Sequester. President Obama went so far as to issue a veto threat to block the second effort. I found contemporaneous reportage on the President’s efforts to preserve the Sequester – and the articles were not critical of those efforts. I found no contemporaneous rebuttal by the administration of these reports.
In fairness, the Republicans did “start it” by threatening to cause the U.S. to default on its debts in 2011. Their actions were grotesquely irresponsible and anti-American. It is also true that the Republicans often supported the Sequester.
The point I was making was not who should be blamed for the insanity of the Sequester. The answer was always both political parties. I raised the President’s efforts to save the Sequester because they revealed his real preferences. Those of us who teach economics explain to our students that what people say about their preferences is not as reliable as how they act. Their actions reveal their true preferences. President Obama has always known that the Sequester is terrible public policy. He has blasted it as a “manufactured crisis.”
the administration has stated publicly the three reasons this is so. First, the Sequester represents self-destructive austerity. Indeed, it would be the fourth act of self-destructive austerity. The August 2011 budget deal already sharply limited spending and the January 2013 “fiscal cliff” deal raised taxes on the wealthiest Americans and restored the full payroll tax. The cumulative effect of these three forms of austerity has already strangled the (modest) recovery – adding the Sequester, particularly given the Eurozone’s austerity-induced recession, could tip us into a gratuitous recession.
Second, the Sequester is a particularly stupid way to inflict austerity on a Nation. It is a bad combination of across the board cuts – but with many exemptions that lead to the cuts concentrating heavily in many vital programs that are already badly underfunded.
Third, conservatives purport to believe in what Paul Krugman derisively calls the “confidence fairy.” They assert that uncertainty explains our inadequate demand. The absurd, self-destructive austerity deals induced or threatened by the Sequester have caused recurrent crises and maximized uncertainty. They also show that the U.S. is not ready for prime time.
When he acted to save the Sequester, Obama proved that he preferred the Sequester to the alternative. When the alternative threatened by the Republicans was causing a default on the U.S. debt (by refusing to increase the debt limit), one could understand Obama’s preference (though even there I would have called the Republican bluff). The Republicans, however, had extended the debt limit in both of the cases that President Obama acted to save the Sequester in 2011.
Similarly, President Obama has revealed his real preferences in the current blame game by not calling for a clean bill eliminating the Sequester. It is striking that as far as I know (1) neither Obama nor any administration official has called for the elimination of the Sequester and (2) we have a fairly silly blame game about how the Sequester was created without discussing the implications of Obama’s continuing failure to call for the elimination of the Sequester despite his knowledge that it is highly self-destructive.
The only logical inference that can be drawn is that Obama remains committed to inflicting the “Grand Bargain” (really, the Grand Betrayal) on the Nation in his quest for a “legacy” and continues to believe that the Sequester provides him the essential leverage he feels he needs to coerce Senate progressives to adopt austerity, make deep cuts in vital social programs, and to begin to unravel the safety net. Obama’s newest budget offer includes cuts to the safety net and provides that 2/3 of the austerity inflicted would consist of spending cuts instead of tax increases. When that package is one’s starting position the end result of any deal will be far worse.
In any event, there is a clear answer to how to help our Nation. Both Parties should agree tomorrow to do a clean deal eliminating the Sequester without any conditions. By doing so, Obama would demonstrate that he had no desire to inflict the Grand Betrayal.
The only logical inference that can be drawn is that Obama remains committed to inflicting the “Grand Bargain” (really, the Grand Betrayal) on the Nation in his quest for a “legacy” and continues to believe that the Sequester provides him the essential leverage he feels he needs to coerce Senate progressives to adopt austerity, make deep cuts in vital social programs, and to begin to unravel the safety net. Obama’s newest budget offer includes cuts to the safety net and provides that 2/3 of the austerity inflicted would consist of spending cuts instead of tax increases. When that package is one’s starting position the end result of any deal will be far worse.
In any event, there is a clear answer to how to help our Nation. Both Parties should agree tomorrow to do a clean deal eliminating the Sequester without any conditions. By doing so, Obama would demonstrate that he had no desire to inflict the Grand Betrayal.
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