I agree that it's difficult, but wonder what exactly the CBO and others mean when they pretty much universally proclaim that our current path is "unsustainable." I'm no economic genius, and I don't want stuff to be cut just for the sake of cutting and depriving people of things (there used to be a time when you were often accused of the latter if you talked about things like "fiscal responsibility", but now, it seems like it is a much more accepted idea that we need to figure out how to get this under control.) But if our path is "unsustainable", what choice do we have? And, what happens if you just continue down an "unsustainable" path?

Or maybe it doesn't matter at all. Maybe the debt can just get worse every year and it really doesn't matter. But it either matters or it doesn't. If it doesn't matter, then we shouldn't worry about debt or tax increases. If it does matter, and the path is truly "unsustainable" that tells me we HAVE to make those difficult cuts, or we face some type of economic ruin that would throw us towards something worse like austerity measures.

Instead we're just forever stuck in the middle. Politicians fighting to the death over tiny tax increases and meaningless cuts. It's a chance to throw a lot of money around and for people to debate government philosophy but it's all really meaningless, I mean, we have our path, and unsustainable or not, we're going down it. That's just the way things are setup politically right now. Until and if we have some REAL consequence of public debt, of course.

It doesn't matter in the short term. It matters in the longer term. But in the longer term, getting the economy back to something closer to full employment will provide incrased economic activity (by definition) that will go some % of the way towards fixing things. Not to say that cuts/adjustments won't need to be made, but the time to make them isn't now.

Then why is the time to increases taxes now?

What does that change?

What does what change?

If the debt is not a huge problem in the short-term and our "unsustainable" path is not really so "unsustainable" in that short term, and if its OK if we put off cuts indefinitely, what's the urgency in raising taxes immediately? How does that help the stated goal of growing the economy? It's not like our spending is tied to those modest tax increases. We're gonna spend what we're gonna spend regardless of tax revenue.

I guess the tax increases would increase tax revenue. And it shouldn't hurt the economy if it's done properly. Basically just lessens the annual budget deficit.

Ideally it isn't the time to raise taxes, but given the political realities the expiration of the Bush cuts forced action. Personally, I'd like to see us phase in a return to the Clinton rates on everything. It might work to do this based on unemployment rate benchmarks so that it doesn't take too much money out of the economy before the recovery is stable.

But you're right, tax increases and budget cuts both pull money out of the economy.

And I'm sure there's plenty of Dems that would also love to see reasonable cuts but politically, they just have to oppose every one which kind of sucks. Just like Republicans politically have to oppose any tax increase.

Thus they both are the Party of No. It should make sense that the sensible thing to do is to not to transfer more money from the economy into the federal government for dubious gains.


Doesn't one transfer real economic gains to the government (a net loss), while the other simply transfers money to various entities (no net loss)?

Can we return to the Clinton spending on everything as well?

So you were bailed out by the government to stop you going out of business, you are running a huge ad campaign to thank the american people and government for the bailout, what's the logical next step? Why join a lawsuit by some of your shareholders that the terms of the bailout were too unfair and it's the governments fault that the shares devalued so much of course!

The banking sector is the most illogical fucking thing in the world. I get the feeling that if an alien race did come to earth they'd just be mindblown at this insane system we have.

Only if you assume the market is a purely efficient entity and that the government contributes nothing back to the economy, both of which are completely false.

SI

Well, shareholder lawsuits like this are not all that uncommon, and a big part of our economic issues (companies have to think short-term profits and stock price, otherwise they get sued by shareholders). I'm not all that upset that AIG is taking time to think this through before making a decision, but I'll be ticked off if they do join it.

Twice now the president was willing to agree to substantial cuts to entitlements, but both times the GOP bailed. If the president made the deal enough Dems would have joined to pass it.

"Willing" only in exchange for tax rates that the Republicans oppose. While at the same time arguing that the Republicans should agree to higher taxes and to raise the debt limit first, and ONLY later once that's resolved discuss cutting as part of a new negotiation separate from the taxes and debt limit. The two sides are doing the same thing.

Edit: Which I understand is something that's necessary in politics but it's something Obama used to rail against and pretend he was above, until his second term when he finally learned how things work. But if Obama believed that reasonable cuts were important on their own, he'd certainly have the votes to get that done.

But if all the bad comes from one party that party will get crushed in the election. Look at 2010, the GOP spent a ton of money saying the Dems were going to cut Medicare. If Obama has to own all the tax increases and cuts the Dems will get killed in 2014. It simply isn't realistic to expect one party to do everything unpopular while the other party gets to complain.

As for the willing point, yes, that's the whole point of a grand bargain. Both sides make concessions, only the past two times the GOP has decided to bail.

Or in other words, were better at the process and got a better deal the Dems did and a better one than you'd like.

I've read plenty of opinions from Dems who are disappointed in Obama and just thinks that he sucks at this.

Edit: I think you posted at one point that the Dems should just welcome the fiscal cliff if they didn't get what they wanted. If they did bargain harder, bargain better, and engaged in "obstructionism" to let's say, stop the PATRIOT Act, the Defense of Marriage Act, Iraq War funding, or maybe if they got Clinton tax rates for everyone with no cuts whatsoever, would you be here railing against them for their tactics or would you be celebrating in the streets? It's only the loser of a negotiation or a game that complains that there was something structurally wrong with the process. Part of complaining in this instance is saying that the Republicans should gave given the Dems more of what they wanted, and that only the Dems are reasonable. The loser of a negotiation can always portray itself as more reasonable as a way to save face. But the fact is, the Dems oppose all cuts just as the Republicans oppose all tax increases.

I have yet to see any numbers I'd consider "substantial". And none of the numbers I've seen have had time frames associated with them (cutting $400 million now might be good, cutting $400 million over 10 years is nothing).

So for example, the only real spending cut here is "A few hundred billion in discretionary cuts". Over what timeframe?

And excuse my ignorance here as it's been discussed but I haven't seen a definition, what is "Chained CPI"? I presume CPI is Consumer Price Index, but chained to what?

Chained CPI would lower the consumer price index increases, which, over time would make fairly substantial cuts to the growth of SS. In essence it's an agreement to cut Social Security.

That's a completely different scenario. You complained that the Dems aren't willing to cut anything, but they are and have offered real cuts that have been turned down. The history of these negotiations prove the Dems don't "oppose all cuts". They have offered chained CPI for real SS cuts and in 2011 substantial cuts to Medicare growth including an increase in the age of eligibility.

If you want to argue that the Dems won't propose and push for cuts by themselves, you're right, but that's the whole point of a Grand Bargain. It is unrealistic to ask either party to do all the unpopular things by themselves.

The fun part about Medicare cuts is that the way they are doing it is:

- Just paying doctors less for the same care
- Adding onerous rules to medical providers (especially hospitals) that make it easy for them to simply not pay (for example, go to the hospital for something, have to go back within a short time window for something else, that's a readmission and you lose your reimbursement for both incidents).

They aren't doing anything to address why healthcare costs so much in the first place. It's like how they treat states with unfunded mandates: demand the extra care, but pay less than before for it.

Political negotiation requires both sides to bring something concrete to the table. The Republicans want the Democrats to bring everything to the table for them (and take all the blame for all of it).

Two pages ago you wanted to raise taxes now and not cut anything until some vague point in the future.

Edit: The Dems view any real cut, under any circumstance, as a type of currency that they need to get something for. That's fine if that's the political strategy, just stop pretending that the Dems are from from this higher more reasonable place. They just got less in the negotiation. They got beat. By a party they keep proclaiming is dying.

And what's often ignored is that one of the major reasons the Dems keep getting beat is the presence of the tea party, which gained momentum and continues to exist in its twisted form because many Americans got sick of the Democrats and Republicans ignoring these issues. If the Democrats really were so high and mighty and reasonable, maybe they should have actually worked towards fiscal responsibility and then maybe they wouldn't have had the backlash and the tea party to contend with. Why was there no Democratic version of the "tea party" - why did the Dems completely ignore that entire sentiment that millions had and left everything in the hands of the Republicans? Oh I know, "political reasons." They've ignored fiscal responsibility and they're now paying the price, even when by all accounts society is completely moving away from traditional conservative social ideas. The Dems haven't been able to capitalize on that because the party as a whole, the platform, doesn't give a shit about responsible governing, while millions of Americans (including those who have no problem with gay marriage and such), do.

Millions of Americans pretend to want responsible governing, but they also want no cuts or tax increases. The Tea Party isn't a group that wants a balanced budget, they just don't want anyone else to get their government benefits.

edit: The closest thing to a Tea Party plan, the Ryan budget, takes thirty years to balance the budget and relies on very questionable assumptions about medical spending to get there.

The thing which amazes me in America is that most people are willing to:

* Cut individuals social security benefits
* Cut individuals medical benefits (ie. Medicare)
* At least discuss tax increases on individuals (even if not for themselves for the 'rich')

Yet I very very very rarely see anyone even propose making corporations pay any more .... is there a specific reason why its considered 'ok' to increase taxes people and not corporations?

(I'm aware some people are against all taxation - this is really a question for those who aren't)

Probably because America is ran more like a Plutocracy than a republic/democracy. You (the politicians) don't bite the hand (corporations) that feeds you.

That's my guess at least.

Who isn't, the people or the politicians? I think you know the answer to the second. ($$$$$$$) As for the first, I don't know many people who aren't fed up with the corporate welfare. (Including hardcore Republicans, liberal teacher friends, a big Obama supporter, and of course my Libertarian friends :) ) The politicians just don't really care what the people want.

Yep. We all agree on this.

I disagree. I think the media turned the tea party and the occupy wall street movements into Democrat and GOP things but I think both started and contained a lot of people that are just sick of out of control spending (by both parties), warmongering (by both parties), and corporate welfare (by both parties). The media managed to do its job and spin it into a D vs R thing but it isn't what it started out as. I recall incumbents from both parties getting voted out of office.

Ya, it's true, for whatever reason, personal income has been the hot thing for a long time and the thing the debates revolve around, to the extent that the Dems were willing to allow more Wall Street tax loopholes into the fiscal cliff bill in order to achieve that more public "win" with regard to income tax rates. Maybe it's just a simpler language to understand - people making $250k, or $400k, and "Clinton tax rates". How Exxon or Google makes its money and how its taxed (and not taxed) is a lot harder to wrap your head around.

Here on FOFC, we've had long discussions about the corporate loopholes that allow GE, Apple, Google, etc to get away with minimal tax hit. Of course when "jobs" are all important, that's part of the answer (in addition to what others have said).

Might want to read up on the case a little more-it's a shareholder lawsuit.


And doctors and hospitals are just going to opt out of Medicare more and more.

The tax on all medical devices in Obama's health care laws isn't going to help, either.



Medicare/medical benefits is the big elephant in the room.

Corporations can move to other jurisdictions. Increasing tax rates and closing loopholes on them will just push them to countries that are much more tax-friendly. Not to mention increasing taxes on them just trickles down the cost of those taxes to the consumers. Not saying it's right, but that is what happens.

But at the end of the day there's only two ways to bring down per capita medical costs, either you limit access or you reduce the growth of payments to providers.

And the second one just pushes more doctors and hospitals to accept Medicare.

I think we'll see a lot more of this moving forward. Health care avoidance is going to become as common as tax avoidance. Worst part is that the new law not only doesn't help these people, it also causes their hours to be cut by 10 hours a week, thereby reducing their take home wages as well.

Fast-Food Worker Hours Cut, New Health Care Law Blamed

The employer mandate doesn't kick in until 2014. The owner's just being a dick.

My sister recently lost her job as a store manager at a local Dominos. She's looking for pretty much anything she can get until she can find another management job, looking at the standard big chains (dominos/papa johns/pizza hut) and also a number of smaller franchises and mom and pop owned places. I'd say she's probably applied at 15 stores by now and every single one of them that is hiring is telling everyone who applies that they will be limited to 29 hours/week for any sort of non-management position. Some of them are limiting current employee hours already, some have not yet, but all of them are limiting new hire hours.

Most aren't going to wait until then. You need to start switching the policies this year so the new scheduling is in place well in advance. I know the art of creating bad guys out of business leaders is a well-entrenched thing now. With that said, they have to start making those decisions as quickly as possible so their aren't any issues when the change takes place. A year is not long when you're planning changes in how you employ and schedule people with that many employees. We're going to see a ton of this in the first half of the year.


Exactly. The change has to be planned well in advance to entrench that in corporate policy well before the end of the year.

Obviously if they made the cutoff 30 hours they would have known that the new service industry standard would become <30 hours (more so than it is already, anyway). My question is why that was considered do-able - is it better to have more people working, albeit part-time, at the sacrifice of some full-time jobs? Maybe it's better just to have more different bodies in there working some amount of hours. It might make the unemployment rate look better.

People will still work the equivalent hours of a 40 hour week, as in they will still have basically the same periods consumed by work, and they will just get paid for/work 30. Instead of working 3-11 they'll get stuck working 5-11 or some such.

Huh?

I'm pretty sure that's 40 hours in the first example & 30 hours in the 2nd one.

Are you trying to equate it with them not being able to do much (personally) with those two extra hours or something?

That's exactly what will happen. It will likely lead to more people working two jobs, neither of which will provide health benefits. There will also be a decrease in the official unemployment rate because new workers will be employed to cover the additional hours that become available. The problem is that the underemployement rate (which is not reported in official unemployment numbers), will skyrocket because more people will be taking non-management jobs (in some cases, two non-management jobs) and not working at the level they really want to work.

Well, I knew I probably phased it shitty. I mean if I hired a dude (when I worked in restaurant) wed schedule him 5-6 hour shifts with that law vs. 5-8 hour shifts. He makes 75% wages instead, and has to look for another job but still has 5 "working shifts" occupied. It sucks, but it was heading that way anyways. I doubt people schedule 3-10s or 4-7.5 hour shifts.

Well I at least kinda managed to get the general idea you were shooting for (but was open to the possibility I was really really confused).

This has been happening for a long time. Blaming ACA is just a convenient excuse.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/bu...anted=all&_r=0

SI

Yep. I worked for Kroger right out of high school and they deliberately held my weekly hours back to make sure I didn't trigger some kind of benefit requirement. This was in the mid-90s.

Linking health care to employment is a stupid idea whose time has come and gone anyway. And I say that as someone with a job with a really good health plan.

Putting two of the most important economic eggs of people's lives into the same basket makes little sense.

The only way that health reform would pass is with the promise that "If you like your plan, you won't have to change it." But that was a stupid promise because it kept the skeleton of a fundamentally broken system in place.

So the defense of ACA is that it really doesn't change much. (Except the fact that it appears anecdotal that the service industry IS reacting to it, but we'll have to wait and see actual numbers on that.)

This is the kind of stuff that worried me about this kind of legislation. When there's perceptions or reactions to it that the supporters don't like, they basically say that they don't count. Even if they're real. "These companies are just being jerks, ACA is really great." So we're not supposed to count the realistic outcomes because people aren't acting right. It doesn't really matter though. People have to live in reality. You have to account for perceptions and how people will actually react to things. Some people think that it's possible that if taxes go too high, people won't hire as much, or they'll spend less, or they're move their company. And maybe they don't have to on paper, who knows. But if they did, that's still bad. That still counts. Legislation that only works in a fantasy world isn't that great, that's the basis of a lot of criticism of Democrat-based legislation. We know at the end of the day it won't work and it will be Republicans' fault.

Your mistake is in assuming I'm defending ACA. Without a public option, the base structure of the bill makes no sense.

EDIT: Tho there are quite a few useful provisions.

SI

Of course there will be costs, that's the reality of an employer based system. Cutting back on hours a year ahead of it being necessary and refusing to even look at other ways those costs can be made up isn't the only option. Choosing fucking over your employees as the first option does make you a dick, and it only works because the labor market still sucks. If unemployment were under six percent a lot of companies couldn't go this route and still retain labor.

The Papa Johns guy estimated that providing healthcare would add twenty cents to the cost of each pizza.

This.

I would just like to add that this seems to be true with most of the large bills the Congress passes.

ACA is horseshit. It's a first step, and as noted, does include some useful provisions, but without a public option you're not going to see many on the left stand up and say that it's what they wanted.

It's a pathetic compromise (when none was necessary, or even desired based upon what Obama campaigned on), a half-measure at best, and frankly, for as much good as it will hopefully do in the short term, it disgusts me, and I think it will only be fully redeemed longer-term if we get a public option out of it and reform the damn system of employment-based healthcare that is an anachronism in the developed world.

That's probably true but it seems like Republicans are more willing to "own" their legislation (and executive branch actions), for better or worse, at least during the Bush years. We can evaluate those actions, torch them for it, see how in some ways, it damaged the country and learn from it. With Dems its always harder to nail down. It's harder to know what they really stand for, it's harder to analyze the impact of their actions. I always wonder how intentional that is from the people actually in power.

Really? So Republicans own the explosion of the debt due to the Afghanistan & Iraq wars?? They own the impact of the Bush tax cuts on the debt?

Those two/three things are the largest contributors to the debt.

The big one (I think) is the pre-existing condition/mandate thing, right, that kind of creates something of a national health care system is that you can always get treated through an insurance company, and everyone has to contribute to that pool whether they're a current insurance customer or not.

Which is nice if it works well (and there's other provisions that might work well), it'll just have to be measured against any cost increases of insurance, impact on the debt, impact on medicare, impact on access to care, etc. We can evaluate those things in time but nobody's ever accountable because if the costs are too much and there's other unforeseen negative consequences, it's not really anything anybody wanted anyway. The plan's nickname does have Obama's name on it, but there's kind of a subtle effort to dissociate him from it and the plan from that nickname, as if it's some early damage control.

Exactly, those are Republican things. They had some bi-partisan support at the time, but they own that stuff for better or worse now. It's easy to criticize or praise them based on that, it's easy to analyze the Bush cuts and the Bush years in general. What do Dems own? Not ACA, they're running the hell away from that already. It's impossible to criticize them because they don't really stand for anything. It was 8 years of complaining under Bush, and then they finally got the the keys, but it's like we're still in the Bush years. The Dems are more of an opposition party, even when they're in power. Which is nice, the Republicans running amuck would be no good. But it makes it impossible to critique their performance.

Well it's hard to judge the ACA when much of it hasn't gone into effect yet.

Definitely, if more Dems were like, "this is our plan, it's going to be awesome," and then we could judge how awesome it was and they were, that'd be great. But it won't be like that. Any problems will be disassociated as stuff they didn't really want or it "won't count" because it's just people acting like jerks in response to it that cause the problems. Some are already starting to disassociate themselves. Not a lot of Republicans say, "ya, the Iraq War and the EGTRRA tax cuts and the Patriot Act have problems but that's only because we never wanted that stuff anyway, all the bad results are because of that other party that didn't let us do everything we wanted." They might deny any bad effects entirely or just say they were necessary for the greater good, but at least we know what the Republicans did.

which is why the number 1 thing we should have learned from the 2008 elections is to not elect a supermajority (60) to the senate, when the same party also has a majority of the representatives and the presidency.

Really? Show me like...ONE Republican politician who "owns" the debt explosion??

They don't own the effects or even agree on what the effects were or that they were bad. But they do own the policies. That's my point. We know what the Republicans did, we know what the Bush years are all about. We can attribute those things to Republicans, analyze the effects of those policies, and then judge the Republicans accordingly.

We can't do that with Dems (at least this modern version) because there's always some excuse or reason that the policies they actually execute aren't really the ones they want. ACA is the perfect example. Many Dems are already running and screaming from it, disassociating themselves from it. There's even an effort to take Obama's name off of it. (Note that we say "Bush Tax cuts" but apparently "Obamacare" is going out of style). If there's any negative impacts at all from ACA, we can't even hold Dems responsible for it, because they've already established that it isn't what they really wanted. So how do we evaluate the Dems? We can't. They exist primarily as an opposition party, doing their best to slow down the will of Republicans. But they're generally unable at both the legislative and executive level to put their real ideas out there to be evaluated. How will closing GITMO impact military intelligence and the detention and processing of terrorism suspects? We'll never know. An untested idea is an idea that can never really be challenged. That's the sweet spot that I think the Dems in power prefer.

Edit: And even if it's just all Republicans fault that the Dems can't do everything they want, it's still kind of a big cock tease to actual sincere Dems. Obama runs on a platform he either knows he can't actually implement, or he just has no clue that he can't. Hillary Clinton actually called him on this in the primaries, but it was a lost cause. He gets votes and donations based on ideas that will never be tested in real life. So he can never fail.

While there are exceptions for individual politicians, the Dems seem to be owning the no-torture policy. The pull-out of Iraq and Afghanistan. The ending of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The decision not to defend DOMA. The Kagan and Sotomayor confirmations. The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

There's probably more, but this is off the top of my head.

For better or worse there is also more ideological diversity in the Dem Senate caucus. The ACA had to please everyone from Baucus to Lieberman to Sanders to get to sixty. That required a lot of compromise.

FWIW, I do agree that when it comes to economic issues, politicians of both parties lack the courage to tell us what actually needs to be done (or, at a minimum, to refrain from attacking the other side for telling us harsh truths).

I suspect that a lot of people are going to be pissed now that the acceptance date for tax returns has moved back to Jan 30 and e-filed returns may take 3 weeks or more to post. Hopefully this will wreck places like H&R Block that make their money by scamming dumb poor people and the government(and by extension the taxpayers)

Medicare part D was a clusterfuck as well.

The way I look at it, it was the best Obama could do and I'm satisfied that this is a first step (e.g. it was a miracle that Roberts sided with the liberals). It changes the dynamic from the current as-is cluster and, as it gains acceptance over the next several years, opens up opportunities for additional measures, options etc.

I think you have to take some changes slow and in stages.

We haven't even gotten to the ill effects of that one. Less than 20 years from now Part D will be over 1% of our annual GDP. Republicans are huge spenders too, they just prefer to borrow for it while Democrats want to tax people now for it.

C'mon, it's not like the Clinton tax rates would pay for the Dems' preferred level of spending. I'm pretty sure Dems are OK with borrowing too.

Perhaps we're not that far off from stabilizing our medium term debt.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3885

A preview of what's to come. Not good if it happens IMO but it'll generate months of partisan bickering eventually ending up with the Supremes on constitutionality ... and with last years surprise on ACA, who knows what they will decide.

Senate Democrats to Obama: Bypass Congress on debt limit ‘if necessary’

If we get to a point where the government runs out of money there will be all sorts of legal issues. The President is legally required to spend everything congress appropriates, so is it illegal for him to choose what gets funded? If the concept is legal, is it legal to stop paying federal contractors?

Obama won't support building 'Death Star' - Yahoo! News




The comments in this are gold. I just keep thinking:







SI

Everyone else enjoying the return from payroll tax holiday? This was a much more relevant topic to 99%of Americans. Amazing how little publicity it got considering the broad reaching impact to lower-middle class.

The full text of the White House response was awesome. Absolutely priceless.

It's frustrating to see some money taken out of my paycheck. But at the same time, I'd rather Social Security be solvent and the last 2 years of payroll holidays took like 15 years of solvency off of Social Security so I'd rather we actually be, you know, paying for it. Now if you want to keep taxing payroll above $200K or whatever the cutoff is, and pay SS more progressive with lower pay rates having lower taxes, I'm all for it.

Frankly, I hated that Obama did that in the first place. And I'm glad it's been reinstated.

SI

Yeah. And was it underreported or underemphasized? Sure. But it needed to happen in order to increase the solvency of SS. Then again, the fact that there's a cap on payroll above a certain limit is fucking asinine and needs to be fixed - that alone would do a lot to make SS solvent longer-term (I imagine - I haven't seen the numbers on it lately tbh, and i don't remember them from when I did see them).

From what I understand its supposed to be a pay as you go system. So why are we running a massive surplus?what does that do for anyone except crowd out private investment?

Social Security is not a true PAYGO. The surplus is there because it will be used by baby boomers when they retire. Otherwise the burden for paying for baby boomers would be put on non-retirees who unfairly would have to pay even more to keep up with benefits (of which they would have overpaid by the time they retire).

The money is used to buy special government bonds which help offset the debt so it's not going to waste. It likely keeps income and other taxes down.

Yeah, I wasn't a big fan of it. The problem was that benefited those who were working which means people who already have jobs. I think it would be better to take the amount you were going to lose with the tax cut and create jobs with it. God knows there is a lot of shit this country needs infrastructure wise.

Our old friend Cam is getting a TV show.

Fear of Earmarks Sparks Split in Sandy Aid Bill | TIME.com

Instead of "Fear of Earmarks Sparks Split in Sandy Aid Bill", how about "Attempts to Cram in Unrelated Spending Sparks Split in Sandy Aid Bill". But as long as we keep getting headlines like the first, the media will continue to help block change.

If you read the article it's pretty sympathetic to your viewpoint.

Good lord. Does Obama view each election as a chance to hold a press conference every other day over the lunch hour?

Kids smiling on stage while Joe Biden talks and talks and talks.......

I know, I was very specifically picking on the headline.

No, apparently he does not:

Obama Finishes First Term With Fewest Press Conferences Since Reagan

You can try again though, maybe try:

Interestingly, several of these new executive actions actually are focused on mental health issues, and providing more money for resource officers in schools. You think there is a chance the NRA will praise them? Naaaaa.

Nope in fact they already put out a new ad this morning:

NRA Ad: Obama Is 'Elitist Hypocrite' - YouTube

Hmmm...something tells me that a presidents kids are much more of a target than my kids would be. NRA not really swaying me with their argument there.

There was a decent article by Juan Williams at Fox basically stating how every shred of evidence and precedent put out there gives the president (and elected officials) the right to put certain restrictions on gun purchases and ownership. Johnson, Nixon, Clinton, etc have all enacted some kind of gun rules and courts have upheld it every time...even Scalia said the 2nd amendment is not absolute.

I don't understand why we as a society support most of what the president is proposing (mental health screenings, universal background checks, assault weapons restrictions), but our elected officials don't want to act. I think polls show 80-90% approval of background checks at gun shows. I don't even understand the reasoning behind it, especially in this day and age where we can get computer access underground and in the mountains. Why is it against our 2nd amendment to perform background checks at gun shows?

There is nothing in the 27 executive orders that should upset conservatives. On the other hand, there is nothing in the 27 executive orders that would have really prevented the Sandy Hook tragedy.

It almost seems pointless to me.

This. It's politics as usual. There's nothing inherently wrong with what was proposed IMO. What's wrong is that they used a tragedy like this to push through something that they could have done months ago in a similar fashion or through Congress.

I'm not sure why they are doing this vs picking the fight now, but I like the part about them not getting paid.

House Republicans agree to vote on bill to raise debt limit for 3 months - The Washington Post

I'm not sure the 27th amendment would allow that.

Well a budget hasn't been passed by the Senate since Obama took over so the House is pretty safe in tying strings to it.

Wow. That is almost a reasonable action by the House. Bravo.

Some more polling on Obama's performance.

CNN Poll: Has Obama been all that? – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs
all-that/?hpt=hp_t4

I don't agree with everything Andrew Sullivan says, but I really like this.