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thinkahol *

Obama's "bad negotiating" is actually shrewd negotiating - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com - 0 views

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    In December, President Obama signed legislation to extend hundreds of billions of dollars in Bush tax cuts, benefiting the wealthiest Americans. Last week, Obama agreed to billions of dollars in cuts that will impose the greatest burden on the poorest Americans. And now, virtually everyone in Washington believes, the President is about to embark on a path that will ultimately lead to some type of reductions in Social Security, Medicare and/or Medicaid benefits under the banner of "reform." Tax cuts for the rich -- budget cuts for the poor -- "reform" of the Democratic Party's signature safety net programs -- a continuation of Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies and a new Middle East war launched without Congressional approval. That's quite a legacy combination for a Democratic President. All of that has led to a spate of negotiation advice from the liberal punditocracy advising the President how he can better defend progressive policy aims -- as though the Obama White House deeply wishes for different results but just can't figure out how to achieve them. Jon Chait, Josh Marshall, and Matt Yglesias all insist that the President is "losing" on these battles because of bad negotiating strategy, and will continue to lose unless it improves. Ezra Klein says "it makes absolutely no sense" that Democrats didn't just raise the debt ceiling in December, when they had the majority and could have done it with no budget cuts. Once it became clear that the White House was not following their recommended action of demanding a "clean" vote on raising the debt ceiling -- thus ensuring there will be another, probably larger round of budget cuts -- Yglesias lamented that the White House had "flunked bargaining 101." Their assumption is that Obama loathes these outcomes but is the victim of his own weak negotiating strategy. I don't understand that assumption at all. Does anyone believe that Obama and his army of veteran Washington advisers are incapable of discovering these tactics on th
thinkahol *

CAFR: US agencies have billions, trillions in investments while crying budget deficits ... - 0 views

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    What CAFRs reveal is a communist-style policy whereby the US taxpayers surrender enormous assets to the state, who then "invest" these collective trillions that swell in these accounts. Concurrently, taxpayers are informed of budget deficits to either squeeze more taxes from them and/or cut public services. To add insult to injury, the state lies in omission by never reminding Americans of their hard-earned and withheld trillions as they eliminate jobs, reduce education, and attack the quality of our lives.
thinkahol *

Jeffrey Sachs: Budgetary Deceit and America's Decline - 0 views

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    I am shocked by the U.S. budget negotiations between Congress and President Obama. Every part of the budget debate in the U.S. is built on a tissue of willful deceit.
thinkahol *

America's Shadow Budget - 0 views

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    Why is the Federal Reserve forking over $220 million in bailout money to the wives of two Morgan Stanley bigwigs?
thinkahol *

US Uncut's Anti-Austerity Protests Hit Bank of America - 0 views

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    As a voice at the megaphone of the Portland protest said, "The United States does not have a deficit problem. The United States has a revenue problem." According to a 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office, 25 percent of the biggest corporations pay no federal income tax. B of A, the recipient of $45 billion in bailout funds, shuttles its would-be tax dollars into 115 offshore tax havens. Meanwhile, budget deficits are cited as justification for pay freezes for public workers and cuts to heating assistance programs, Social Security, and other social safety nets.
thinkahol *

How the Deficit Got This Big - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    With President Obama and Republican leaders calling for cutting the budget by trillions over the next 10 years, it is worth asking how we got here - from healthy surpluses at the end of the Clinton era, and the promise of future surpluses, to nine straight years of deficits, including the $1.3 trillion shortfall in 2010. The answer is largely the Bush-era tax cuts, war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recessions.
thinkahol *

Michael Collins: The War on You | Dailycensored.com - 0 views

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    Getting rid of Bush tax cuts for the super-rich, ending the wars, and moving out of the recession/depression would be huge steps toward balancing the budget. But that won't happen with this Congress and this president. Why? That would cost the financial elite money for taxes and lost income for all those weapons they sell to support the wars. The Attack on You Began in Earnest Just Years Ago
thinkahol *

Al Gore on Why Washington Is Broken | Countdown with Keith Olbermann - 0 views

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    As leaders make a final push late Monday to pass a final debt deal and cut federal spending, voters aren't exactly cheering. Americans call the budget impasse "ridiculous," "disgusting" and "stupid," according to a new poll. In this extended interview,  Keith consults with former Vice President and Current TV Chairman Al Gore on why our government is in real trouble.
thinkahol *

Super Congress Debt Reduction Has Little Transparency - 0 views

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    The text of the budget deal reached by President Barack Obama and congressional leaders contains few specific public disclosure provisions for the committee. The standing committees of Congress are allowed to send suggestions for ways to reduce the debt to the super committee members, but there is, as yet, no provision for the disclosure of those reports. The final report is required to be publicly disclosed upon completion, however there is no requirement that the report be placed online. There are also no official requirements for web-casting of committee meetings.
thinkahol *

The myth of Obama's "blunders" and "weakness" - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com - 0 views

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    Even when the President repeatedly says he wants severe budget cuts, many refuse to believe him
thinkahol *

The press nods as absurdity, lies prevail in the budget debate - 0 views

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    Would more accurate news coverage prompt Tea Party and Republican leaders to pay more attention to facts in their assertions about the economy? Maybe yes, maybe no. But, suggests Henry Banta, if the coverage continues at its present dismal level, we'll never find out.
thinkahol *

The Yes Men Present: The Yes Lab for Creative Activism by The Yes Lab - Kickstarter - 0 views

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    ABOUT THIS PROJECT For years, the Yes Men have been tinkering with side-splitting mischief as a way to fight injustice. Our latest film about those efforts, The Yes Men Fix the World, won lots of awards and was released all over the planet... but it simply did not fix the world.  So a year ago, we decided that showing what we do wasn't enough: we needed to help people to actually do it themselves. We called our idea The Yes Lab for Creative Activism. It's a factory for meaningful mischief, and a system for helping organizations and individuals carry out Yes Men-style actions on their own, to get media attention for important issues. But the Yes Lab is more than that: it also aims to help YOU take action on issues of social importance. Today, after a year of testing and nearly a dozen successes, we're proud to announce that the Yes Lab is ready for prime time! It's got a set of cool tools in development, that will soon help YOU get involved in new Yes Lab projects, and even to launch them. And it's got a new home at NYU, with space, lots of eager participants, and an ambitious new structure that will soon be cranking out many new projects. The trouble is that in spite of all that, we still have zero budget for the first round of projects themselves! And that's why you're reading this now. We're asking for $10,000, to make the all-new Yes Lab the lean, mean, change-making machine it can be. Any amount raised over $10,000 will bankroll projects beyond the first round.
thinkahol *

October2011.org | "Stop the Machine! * Create a New World!" - 0 views

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    October 2011 is the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan and the beginning of the 2012 federal austerity budget. It is time to light the spark that sets off a true democratic, nonviolent transition to a world in which people are freed to create just and sustainable solutions. Read more.
thinkahol *

YouTube - Rumsfeld 2.3 Trillion Dollars missing Pentagon 1 DAY b4/9-11 - 0 views

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    Donald Rumsfeld says 2.3 Trillion Dollars missing at Pentagon 1 DAY before the 9/11 tragedy.
Johann Höchtl

Open Knowledge Foundation Blog » Blog Archive » Rethinking Open Data: Lessons... - 0 views

  • You can build it but they won’t come. All successful open source projects build communities of supportive engaged developers who identify with the project and keep it productive and useful.
  • Ongoing maintenance and distribution of the data hasn’t been budgeted for almost all the data sets we have today. This attitude has to change, and new projects give us the chance to get it right, but most existing datasets are unfunded for maintenance and release.
  • there are at least five different types of Open Data groupie: low-polling governments who want to see a PR win from opening their data, transparency advocates who want a more efficient and honest government, citizen advocates who want services and information to make their lives better, open advocates who believe that governments act for the people therefore government data should be available for free to the people, and wonks who are hoping that releasing datasets of public toilets will deliver the same economic benefits to the country as did opening the TIGER geo/census dataset.
Parycek

Gordon Brown and Tim Berners Lee: Back to the Future? - 0 views

  • First to digitalise – to make Britain the leading superfast broadband
  • Second to personalise –
  • Third to economise – in the Pre-Budget Report we set out our determination to find £11 billion of savings by driving up operational efficiency,
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • d I want to go much further in harnessing the power of technology to refashion the structures and workings of government
  • s can open the door to a reinvention of the core policy-making processes and towards a renewal of politics itself
  • to replace the first generation of e-government with a much more interactive second generation form of digital engagement which we are calling Mygov
  • s open, personalised platform will allow us to deliver universal services that are also tailored to the needs of each individual
  • to move from top-down, monolithic websites broadcasting public service information in the hope that the people who need help will find it – to government on demand.
  • survey freely available to the public, without restrictions on re-use. Further details on the package and government’s response to the consultation will be published by the end of March.
  • in the autumn the Government will publish online an inventory of all non-personal datasets held by departments and arms-length bodies – a “domesday book” for the 21st century.
Johann Höchtl

Agile will fail GovIT, says corporate lawyer - Public Sector IT - 0 views

  • The Agile methodology is meant to deliver IT projects flexibly, in iterations.
  • But the lack of clearly defined project roles and requirements is a problem for Agile.
  • There are four clear reasons why Agile won't work in government ICT. The most obvious is that government customers want to know up-front how much a system will cost
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  • Departmental budgets are managed very tightly, and they must be approved
  • Agile is fourthly not suited to public sector management structures.
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