These guys are cooler than we are!
147 Thoughts to “Open Thread…………………………………………Sunday, July 10”
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All contents copyright Moonhowlings.net
Blogroll
- 9500Liberty
- Bacons' Rebellion Blogspot
- Bearing Drift
- Blue Virginia
- Citizen Tom
- Counts of Monte Cristo. The
- Derecho, The
- Dixie Pig, The
- My Side of the Fence
- My Star Journey
- NARAL Pro-Choice VA Blog
- New Dominion Project
- Nova Common Sense
- NovaTownHall Blog
- One Libertarians's Point of View by Al Alborn
- Pete Candland's Blog
- Potomac Local
- Prince William Muckraker
- PW Conservation Alliance
- PWC Moms
- PWCPolitics.com
- PWCPolitics.com
- Red NoVA
- Shad Plank, The
- She the People
- State of NoVA, the
- The Jeffersoniad
- Townhall
- VEA Daily Reports
- VivianPaige
- WDGolden.com
- You, Me and the Lamp Post
First!!!
TPaw is on Meet the Press being a little less than honest. Ack!!! Not good. He also thinks saying that this administration is a gangsta government. He agreed with Bachmann. He was given a chance to say that the term was inappropriate. Opportunity knocked but TPaw didnt go to the door.
Tacky Tim! Tacky!
Sounds to me like that may be the ONLY door Pawlenty did NOT go through in an effort to fend off the Bachmann advances.
He wasn’t too kind to her either. re TPaw. He said Tim Geinthner blamed Bush for everything. I heard the show and he most certainly did not. TPAW just let the political rhetoric flow on everyone without much regard for the truth. I am becoming increasingly disappointed in him. Bachmann will eat him for lunch and she should.
More Obama lies, says White House staff have had a salary freeze ever since he has been in office. Doesn’t he know that these figures are public? Either he is an absolute moron or he thinks nobody will ever double check. Some staffers even got as high as an 86% raise!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYPO2V6sClI
Good morning Dan. Anything positive to say or is it all ‘hate the democrats and Obama’ this morning?
ps I didn’t see any starting pay —-> jump to pay figures there. Maybe they took a different job. Fed jobs have been frozen for quite a while. Not sure about plum jobs. Maybe you could find those same comparison figures from a more reliable source?
That video appeared to be BS from someone with an axe to grind.
http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/wb/292579
Apparently it is safe to pass the buck on Virginia roads for
General Assembly “drivers”.
Not a flattering piece on our POTUS and the current debt limit situation.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6ce92636-ab1a-11e0-b4d8-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1RlJVPv00
http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/292569
Old time populism still survives in the Great Valley of Virginia.
Apparently so does incessant lying.
@marin, you want us to read an article by a guy named CROOK? 🙄
You have to register to read. Will you summarize?
Cato – where does the writer lie?
Because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it is a lie.
Big Dog, it’s called lying by omission. If you think that the 15 trillion in false demand in MBS CDOs created by GSEs like Fannie and Freddie had no role in the crisis then you have to be willing to suspend disbelief. If you think that aggressive enforcement of “redlining” didn’t lower credit standards to levels of unacceptable risk you’re mistaken. Tell me whose signature is on the bill repealing Glass-Steagall, again? If you think that Democrats were somehow blameless and weren’t dancing in lockstep with their Republican colleagues to the tune of their collective Wall Street masters then I have just one question for you.
How does it feel to get played?
@Moon-howler
Good morning Moon. Do I have a more reliable source? How about the whitehouse.gov posting of 2010 and 2011 salaries, is that reliable enough?
Here is 2010: http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/disclosures/annual-records/2010
Here is 2011: http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/disclosures/annual-records/2011
One thing that I did notice when I went back and took another look at the video is that he started out saying that “no white house staff” received raises since he has been in office…. but he quickly corrected himself and said “none of the top earners in the White House staff”. However, I took a look at a few other articles, apparently Obama himself describes a “top earner” in the White House staff as making over $100,000 (which is over 1/3 of the 454 by the way).
But then when I looked at the 2010 report vs the 2011 report there are several “top earners” who had pay increases with NO change in title. Which means that they got raises, not promotions or new jobs and they made over $100,000 in 2010.
Put all that together and you get Obama, lying, again… which is why I ask, what is he possibly thinking saying what he said? Is he stupid or does he think Americans are stupid and will just believe what ever he says?
in moderation due to multiple links?
My apologies. You can delete the above link if it’s not available.
The synopsis was that Mr. Obama may have overplayed his hand and that his strategy is ‘odd’. By saying that he’ll veto any smaller measure and the grand measure is effectively dead there really isn’t any room for a compromise now.
Now, he COULD be using this as a way to push the -R’s into a position where they’ll be responsible for the default and try to score political points that way but I don’t think that’s the appropriate strategy. Congress already has dismal approval ratings. So, will people like them less? Who cares? At the end of the day people want to turn to the POTUS and say “What are you doing to help America get better?”
During a run up to a new election you don’t want those questions with a “I vetoed the framework my VP helped design”.
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. High stakes poker as it were.
@marin, thanks for summarizing. I am trying to figure it all out. Please keep us posted. This entire situation is making me very ill at ease. I feel like it is one of those heads I lose tails I lose situations.
yes. You have been released.
@Dan Cooper
Yes, that is reliable enough. However, I don’t think Obama is lying. I think that the people are moving up through pay grades. It is the pay grades that haven’t been given a raise.
For instance, a GS 13 has sub steps within it. So that person might move on up the pay grade because they did well or because it is an auto move based on time.
Additionally, some people will have taken different jobs at different pay grades.
That is what it looks like to me. That isn’t lying. That is just how federal pay works.
I doubt seriously if the Prez actually looks to see how much each person is making.
@Moon-howler
So what your saying is that someone can have the same job title in 2010, then while keeping that same job title their pay increases and that pay increase is NOT a raise?
For example, just picked this one because it was the first I saw:
Year Employee Salary Job Title
2010 Cynthia Roach $100,904.00 Supervisor of Classification
2011 Cynthia Roach $103,872.00 Supervisor of Classification
So what your saying is that Ms. Roach did NOT get a pay raise?
Yes, I am saying that. It happens all the time. Its because there are step increases built in and you, if you are doing your job satisfactorily, move up the pay grade. Raymond can probably explain it better than I can.
I only know how it works locally.
No, she probably did not. She probably moved up a sub-pay level. Dan, I have never been a federal employee. I know I am not using the right words. Those salaries have been frozen. But people aren’t frozen. Just the salaries.
Oh boy Moon, I think I’m even more confused now than I was before. In the private sector the amount her salary increased is a pretty standard GWI (General Wage Increase) aka, a raise.
If a salary if “frozen”, then her 2011 salary would have been $100,904.00, the same as her 2010 salary.
For instance, let’s say I taught over at Jennie Dean in the City. Let’s say their teacher salaries had been frozen for 2 years. Let’s say I am a third year teacher this upcoming year.
The pay is still the same but I move up from a 2nd year teacher to a third year teacher. The pay is different. But salaries are still frozen.
The Fed pay has the GS scale and then within that scale there are increments.
Dan, Both parties have played us for years.
Republicans are just doing a better job of it right now.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/07/self-hating-bloggers/241748/
Humm-
@Moon-howler
Still don’t get it Moon, in any other world that would equal a pay raise. Are we just talking semantics here? If your in a particular title and your pay increases while in the same job title that IS a pay raise.
Or, is this one of those “only in government” type deals? If so, I can see why we are in the mess we are in. If someone (meaning you), who has worked for government (state and/or federal) can’t tell the difference then Houston, we have a problem.
@Big Dog, exactly! Which is why I don’t claim either, I’m a right leaning independent, more of a fiscal conservative than anything else. Although I think I’m becoming more of a Libertarian day by day.
No, it isn’t a pay raise. There is no raise. the salaries haven’t changed.
Think of positions and each position has a salary assigned to it. People go in and out of positions. Some stay the same. There is no raise.
No, we aren’t talking semantics. There is no raise. Are you suggesting that people not be allowed to quit or that no one new be brought in to a vacant position?
If you work for a company as a salesman and all of a sudden you are made director of marketing, you get more money. The pay that goes to a salesman hasn’t changed nor has the salary for a director changed. You have a new position. That isn’t a raise.
Did you not understand the 2nd to 3rd year teacher at jennie Deane? The system is frozen in my fake school system. However, they will get more money the next year because of longevity, step increase, or whatever that particular system has named its increments.
Meanwhile, the same amount has been allocated for salaries as last year and the year before.
It isn’t a mess. It is a perfectly good system. Many companies have salary structures. It isn’t just government.
I sneaked over to UVC and sneaked a peek at Cargo at his shooting convention. He is just lucky he didn’t shoot his eye out!!!!!
He said he was being deployed on this blog. Is he in the reserves? What did he mean?
@Moon-howler
Let me start out by telling you that my job mainly deals with HR and Payroll, from strictly a batch programming aspect. No, what you stated makes NO sense. I get it if your position/position title changes, yes, you get more money. That is a no brainier.
However, Ms. Roach, kept her same exact title. NOTHING changed for her position yet she got more money in 2011 than she got in 2010 for her base salary. In my world, an most everybody else, THAT IS A RAISE, period.
There is no such thing as being in a specific position at a set salary, then getting more of a base salary the following year while STILL BEING IN THE SAME EXACT POSITION # and TITLE without it being a raise. That scenario does not exist, except in fantasy land or supposably in government (which I’m still very sceptical about).
I do this every day, for the past 15 years for a fairly large company (4,200 or so employees). Never have I EVER seen an employee in lets say:
2010: position #6000001, title “Supervisor of Classification”.
2011: position #6000001, title “Supervisor of Classification”.
Get paid some $3,000.00 more in 2011 than in 2010 and it NOT be a raise. That does not made any logical sense to me what so ever. I even asked a few co-workers the same question giving them the same exact scenario, NOBODY has ever seen anything like it NOT be deemed a raise. EXCEPT, in the very rare event the company did an industry study and revaluated the salary of a particular position based on market averages. Which I highly doubt happened in this situation.
Dan, it happens many different places. Just because you don’t deal with it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
It happened to me several times. I was in the exact same job but I gained a step, therefore I went to the next step but I did not get a raise.
That is how salaries based on increments work. That is how the GS salary scale is set up. There are 10 increments,(or there used to be) say between one GS number and the next. If you are due to move up a step then you do and you are in the next pay position.
Me saying it another way isn’t going to change things. It happens all over the place with companies and jurisdictions.
I believe military pay works the same way, although I am unaware of when it has ever been frozen. When you get promoted you move to a different pay grade. The pay grade remains the same.
“There’s no point in dying on a small cross.”
Joe Biden
Big Deficit Deal or Not, Obama Wins
(WSJ 7-11-2011)
NH steps into the PP debate by defunding it.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/08/us-planned-parenthood-new-hampshire-idUSTRE7675Z820110708
Interesting quote.
“I am opposed to abortion,” said Raymond Wieczorek, a council member who voted against the contract. “I am opposed to providing condoms to someone. If you want to have a party, have a party but don’t ask me to pay for it.”
@marin, I am tired of being polite on this subject and am just going to say what I am thinking. This guy is probably the dumbest mofo I have ever heard of. Does he not realize that he will be paying for it? Pay me now or pay me later. He will pay for it in social services, education, WIC program, schips, medicaid, and a whole lot of other ways I probably don’t even know about. That’s if all goes well.
Do these stupid stupid people really think they are going to stop abortion, or stop people from having sex? That just isn’t how it works. Morality cannot be legislated.
People who are opposed to abortion should do everything in their power to stop unwanted pregancy. You know, its a shame that the world doesn’t live up to Mr. Wieczorek’s moral standards, yours or mine. But it doesn’t. Once we accept that premise, we can do the responsible thing.
Women who want abortions will have abortions. They will scrounge or steal money if that is what it takes. They will seek abortions from individuals whose medical credentials are questionable. They will travel great distances to get one. Or…they will try to do it themselves.
@Dan Cooper
The highest pay for a White House staffer is $172K. The highest pay for a Prince William County staffer (the county exec) is over 20% higher than the most senior WH staffer at $209K a year counting her 2% pay raise that is retroactive back to January.
I see the Iowa group that had Bachmann and Santorum sign their marriage pledge has now dropped the part about the virtue of slavery on African-American family life where, according to the pledge as it read prior to this afternoon when the offending part suddenly disappeared, African-American children were more likely to grow up in a two-parent home with a mother and father during slavery than after Obama took office. The group declined to say the statement was simply wrong claiming instead that it was removed because it could be misconstrued.
http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-07/iowa-marriage-pledge-drops-reference-slavery
@moe
Misconstrued? cough-sputter-choke. Damn.
Dan is being deliberately obtuse regarding the GS schedule, methinks. I would rather just accept that the President was being truthful than have people think I am being that much of a rube.
The GOP’s tax delusion
By Ezra Klein, Tuesday, July 12, 12:51 AM
The Bush tax cuts were not supposed to last forever. Alan Greenspan, whose oracular endorsement was perhaps the single most decisive event in their passage, made it very clear that they were a temporary solution to a temporary surplus. “Recent data significantly raise the probability that sufficient resources will be available to undertake both debt reduction and surplus-lowering policy initiatives,” Greenspan said in 2001.
Okay, so maybe he wasn’t so clear. But everyone knew what he meant. And, broadly speaking, they agreed. We had a big surplus. It was time to do something with it. Brad DeLong, a former Clinton administration official and an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, didn’t want to see the surplus spent on tax cuts. He wanted to see it spent on public investments. “Nevertheless,” he wrote in 2001, “it is hard to disagree with Greenspan’s position that — if our future economic growth is as bright as appears likely— it will be time by the middle of this decade to do something to drastically cut the government’s surpluses.”
Ten years later, there is no surplus. It turned out that our future economic growth wasn’t as bright as had seemed likely in 2001. That, plus $2 trillion in tax cuts and a few trillion more in wars and assorted spending, left us with large and growing deficits.
The next step, then, is obvious. The Bush tax cuts were scheduled to expire after 10 years. Congress extended them for two years in 2010, as you don’t want a massive tax increase in the middle of a deep recession. But as we look toward our future deficits, it seems we’ll need to let at least some of the tax cuts expire. Indeed, Greenspan now says we should let all of the Bush tax cuts expire.
But the Republican Party refuses to let any of them expire. And forget admitting that tax cuts meant for surpluses don’t make sense during deficits; they refuse to admit that tax cuts have anything to do with deficits at all.
It’s this belief that stands in the way of a debt deal. “We have a spending problem, not a taxing problem,” Republicans say. If the federal government defaults on Aug. 2, that sentence will be to blame. What a shame, then, that the sentence is entirely, obviously, wrong.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-gops-tax-delusion/2011/07/11/gIQAtIga9H_story.html
Very good article. The Repugs squandered our surpluses left by the Clinton Administration and left us with 10 percent unemployment.
I flag the last sentence of #36 as contrary to the stated blog policy of civil debate. I demand further that Starrypug be reprimanded for persistent violations of the standing rules.
I hope that is a joke.
I would have to throw myself off my own blog for saying Faux News.
Starry,
There is a great congressional statement from Greenspan about long term tax cuts and their inability to cover the ultimate debt they create. Just like the stimulus package, tax cuts are meant to “stimulate” the economy and then sunset. We have had bush tax cuts reinstated under obama and here is my question? WHERE ARE THE JOBS? Weren’t we sold tax cuts because those are the people that create jobs………………………..
@Big Dog
Regarding the editorial linked above, and Cato’s comment about incessant lying, have a look at the graph linked here:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?id=FGRECPT
Revenues fell during the recession early in Bush II’s first term, as they did in the recent recession. However, despite the Bush tax cuts revenues surged faster in Bush’s second term than they did during the Clinton administration.
According to the editorial, “George W. Bush’s eight years in the White House were a complete disaster. He cut taxes twice, drastically reducing revenue…”
The editorial writer is somewhat truth-challenged. Bush II did not have a tax-cut related revenue problem, he had a spending problem that turned even many Republicans against him.
We won’t get out of the mess we’re in now trying to get more blood out of the same turnips. Spending must be reduced!
http://www.slate.com/id/2296578/
NtW,
“By Bush’s own metrics, his tax cuts were a failure.”
I was going to mention that bit about “Faux News” but I reconsidered in favor of “When in Rome, do as the Romans”? Now, if Starry would just stop serving as a clipping service for the Washington Compost and give us some original thoughts once in awhile, we could have a nice debate from time to time.
The jobs, my dear Elena, are with my son-in-law small businessman who cut back staff severely when the economic downturn put the squeeze on his clients and who will not start rehiring again until he gets some solid assurance from the feds that he will not be hit with higher taxes and higher employee costs. He thinks it quite odd that he, an Hispanic immigrant who arrived here without money and built a small business from scratch, is now considered somewhow to be in the same league as those millionaires and billionaires the libs want to touch for additional revenue. He says this after letting many of his staff go, laying off the company accountant in favor of an independent accountant on retainer, and moving his business from his office to his basement. Propriety prevents me from quoting him directly on the subject of Obama.
@Wolverine
You are expecting too much.
Surfing the internets and saw this.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/28/news/economy/California_companies/index.htm?iid=Popular
Buffeted by high taxes, strict regulations and uncertain state budgets, a growing number of California companies are seeking friendlier business environments outside of the Golden State.
Taxes and regulations don’t kill jobs. They just move them to friendlier places that aren’t as blue.
I bet instead of fixing the problem CA will pass some job exportation tax. ..chuckle..
Thanks for that link, Marinm. The bit about PayPal struck me right away. Mrs. W has a relative who works for PayPal in San Jose. He, in fact, was one of the inventors who gave us that device in which you type in certain letter and number combinations in order to gain access to blogs or other websites. PayPal is truly a “California Dreaming'” company. To see those guys moving thousands of jobs to other states ought to start the firebells ringing seriously for Californians.
I guess if you want someone to blame it is always easier to blame Obama than the funny money stuff under Bush.
Bush gets my full credit for bringing in Hank Paulson. Of course, I feel confident Paulson didn’t suit many on this blog.
Fear was also a problem during the depression. People horded money then also.
@Wolverine
Probably wise, especially considering some of the insults that are dished out on here that I often just let slide. The bad thing is, many don’t realize they are being insulting.
I guess we will see how faux Faux News is once Rupert lands back on his feet. Does anyone think it is strange that he was busted in UK for playing loosey goosey with facts and that is the very thing many of us have been complaining about here?
Actually, the Murdoch thing in the U.K. doesn’t surprise me much. There has always been something rather bizarre about the British press, particularly the tabloids. That MP complaining about the topless gals in the tabloids? Where has she been for the last 25 years? Hiding in a cave in the Hebrides?
The Repubs were unable to save the incandescent light bulb. Has the trip down the slippery slope begun?
http://n.pr/qtlnNF
I believe she was just commenting and was overheard. It seems like quite an over-reaction by Rupert’s peeps, to me. I don’t believe the comment contained the ape discovering fire aspect that you suggest.
Moe, I am so confused. I thought that George Bush signed the new lightbulb standard act several years ago?
Why is Obama getting the blame?
The Bush tax cuts haven’t done a damn thing for the economy.
Neither have Obama’s three wars.
I would only blame him for one of those wars.