
The Caucus
The latest on President Obama, the new administration and other news from Washington and around the nation. Join the discussion.
The Colloquium is a blog for our generation to express their political opinions. Frustration with the political system seems to be growing, yet our generation does not participate in the political process. This is a place solely for this avid participation so that we can feel more active in the political debate. Any and all political issues are to be discussed.

Admittedly, I am not an expert on Economics. However, I do follow the logic of Ron Paul, which is to say, ‘How does the fed have the right to make money out of thin air?’ First, let us examine the issue of the fed and its questionable legality. In our system of government, there are supposedly three branches of government, this process as we know from simplistic civics classes is to provide a system of checks and balances. However, it seems the power of the fed would indicate there is a fourth branch of government, a pseudo branch. It is like an appendix that has a purpose. It is argued, and I have heard this argument prior to college while in high school, that the fed at times has more power than the president does. More power than the president!! (Yes two exclamation points for emphasis). This should not be an issue from a constitutional standpoint. How can an unconstitutionally mandated organization, which we do not even know is privately owned or owned by the government, exercise is such a fashion that is so powerful. It affects are lives in every single fashion simply because, we need money. Money is provided by the fed. But, where does the fed get money?
Since the creation of the Fed in 1913, suspiciously passed in congress two days before Christmas when other politicians were home to be with family, inflation has increased exponentially to the years in existence.
Inflation is tied to the strength of the dollar, and the dollar has lost 96% of its purchasing power since the fed was created. The Fed’s purpose was to ensure that a banking failure like that seen in 1907 would never happen again. Of course, the great depression happened in 1929, so the purpose of the fed and its preventative tactics should have been called into question then.
Does today’s crisis relate to the fed? This question is an ongoing debate. Here is how I see it in the most simplistic terms. The fed creates money, because it has a divine power to create where there is none; I cannot fathom the thought process, so I will digress from this point. When the fed creates these monies, it lends it to the banks (at interest), so the banks can lend it to us (at interest). Let us say the fed creates 100 dollars, then loans it to a bank at 4% interest, then that bank loans it to someone and charges 6% percent interest, the fed will get 104 dollars from the deal, the private bank will get 102 because it had to pay the fed back the 4%. But wait, the fed only created 100 dollars, how will the interest be paid? Obviously the fed has to create more money. Does this make sense? No of course, it does not make sense.
If you repeat the process several millions times and loan out money to people in mortgage backed securities, eventually money will run out. This is the credit crisis in essence; credit is frozen because money ran out.
The fed’s only option is to increase the money supply, AKA inflation. Increasing the money supply takes time and the crisis has already extended to the people, and the people are struggling with existing mortgages. The epidemic exacerbates further as people run out of money because they are laid off from their jobs, because businesses that operate on credit can’t get money to pay them. This in turn causes people to save, which causes business to lay off people because they aren’t selling; and the process continues. The fed’s plan will eventually work and here is the reason why:
The fed pumps money in, inflation will rise. Inflation is necessary to keep the cycle going and beneficial when buying things on the basis of credit. As inflation rises, prices for goods will rise. So those who have a mortgage on a house for let us say, 100 dollars (to simplify the thought process), and are lucky enough to survive the massive layoffs will now have an easier time paying for the mortgage. Because once everything is realigned and credit markets start pumping again, and inflations rises (and it will because it is necessary in this system) then the person who bought the house for 100 dollars, will theoretically have more access to money to pay off the mortgage. The other benefit is that the property value, which the mortgage is based off, used to be 100 dollars, but will now be 125 dollars because of inflation! The person who can survive this crisis will be much better off than the person who was foreclosed on, because based on credit he has made money. When we buy things based on credit, inflation will make the item bought cheaper in the future, depending of course on the interest rate.
I question those who called Obama a socialist looking to spread the wealth and not because I am fan of him. Obama was elected for many reasons, one being because he will close the gap on the economic disparities; this is where the theory ‘he wants to spread the wealth, he is a socialist,’ originates. However, his policies thus far are counter indicative to the agenda of closing the economic disparities, or being a socialist. He is more of the same, because he is supporting the same system that has been in place for 80 years causing the disparities. If he were truly an admirer of President Lincoln, he would abolish the Fed and create the “Greenback” again. Abolishing the fed would eliminate social disparities, or at the least give those of us a chance to regain our footing which we lost in the rat race. If he really cared for the black caucus this would give them a chance to finally make money without the constant threat of inflation. Obama is not a socialist, I repeat he is not a socialist, he is simply another corrupt politician, because we must take into account the natural inclinations of human nature when confronted with power, and its ability to corrupt.
He has continually rebuked those who question his plan. He has said, “Offer a counter proposal if you don’t like the plan.” We have, now get your head out of the gutter and listen to us! Abolish the Fed!
Reform Lite: Obama goes soft on pork
| |||||
The old bulls won. See alsoSteve Ellis, head of the Taxpayers for Common Sense, put it more simply: “Some of his campaign promises have met congressional realities and he didn’t overcome them.” Further, he proposed that any earmark for a for-profit company face the same competitive bidding process as others seeking federal contracts. And he said his White House will examine earmarks and, if they find them objectionable, seek to eliminate them – in concert with Congress. Top members of the Democratic congressional leadership as well as their aides have made plain in recent weeks, that they had little appetite for making major changes to a process that allows many of their members to return millions to their home states and districts for politically popular projects. Again, I repeat my comments in the Health Care section. We elected a president based on a foundation of excellent public speaking and rhetoric. This early in his presidency and he has backtracked on a lot of his stances. The stances got him elected. I am glad he is riling up the Republican base. |
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR – 9 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — If the global economy were a 100-yard dash, the U.S. would start 23 yards behind its closest competitors because of health care that costs too much and delivers too little, a business group says in a report to be released Thursday.
The report from the Business Roundtable, which represents CEOs of major companies, says America's health care system has become a liability in a global economy.
Concern about high U.S. costs has existed for years, and business executives — whose companies provide health coverage for workers — have long called for getting costs under control. Now President Barack Obama says the costs have become unsustainable and the system must be overhauled.
Americans spend $2.4 trillion a year on health care. The Business Roundtable report says Americans in 2006 spent $1,928 per capita on health care, at least two-and-a-half times more per person than any other advanced country.
In a different twist, the report took those costs and factored benefits into the equation.
It compares statistics on life expectancy, death rates and even cholesterol readings and blood pressures. The health measures are factored together with costs into a 100-point "value" scale. That hasn't been done before, the authors said.
The results are not encouraging.
The United States is 23 points behind five leading economic competitors: Canada, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and France. The five nations cover all their citizens, and though their systems differ, in each country the government plays a much larger role than in the U.S.
The cost-benefit disparity is even wider — 46 points — when the U.S. is compared with emerging competitors: China, Brazil and India.
"What's important is that we measure and compare actual value — not just how much we spend on health care, but the performance we get back in return," said H. Edward Hanway, CEO of the insurance company Cigna. "That's what this study does, and the results are quite eye-opening."
Higher U.S. spending funnels away resources that could be invested elsewhere in the economy, but fails to deliver a healthier work force, the report said.
"Spending more would not be a problem if our health scores were proportionately higher," Dr. Arnold Milstein, one of the authors of the study, said in an interview. "But what this study shows is that the U.S. is not getting higher levels of health and quality of care."
Other countries spend less on health care and their workers are relatively healthier, the report said.
Medical costs have long been a problem for U.S. auto companies. General Motors spends more per car on health care than it does on steel. But as more American companies face global competition, the "value gap" is being felt by more CEOs — and their hard pressed workers.
One thing the report does not do is endorse the same solution that countries like Canada have adopted: a government-run health care system.
The CEOs of the Business Roundtable believe health care for U.S. workers and their families should stay in private hands, with a government-funded safety net for low-income people.
That is a significant line. One portion that I believe this article does not consider is the relative health of these people prior to health coverage. We have higher obesity rates than all those countries and we have a high incidence of diabetes. I would also like to look at the numbers on exercise, physical education programs, the jobs these countries all perform in contrast to US jobs.
WASHINGTON: The White House will push for treatment, rather than jail, for people arrested for drug-related crimes as it announced the nomination of Seattle's police chief, R. Gil Kerlikowske, to oversee efforts to control illegal drugs.
The choice, announced by the Vice-President, Joe Biden, signal a sharp departure from Bush administration policies, away from cutting the supply of illicit drugs from foreign countries and toward curbing drug use across the United States.
Mr Biden, who helped shape the Office of National Drug Control Policy as a US senator in the 1980s, said the Obama Administration would continue to focus on the south-west border, where Mexican authorities are facing thousands of drug-related murders and unchecked violence from drug cartels moving cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine into US markets. But it remained unclear how the new administration would engineer its budget to tackle the problem.
Since president Richard Nixon first declared a war on drugs nearly four decades ago, governments have spent billions of dollars with mixed results, according to independent studies and drug policy scholars. In recent years, the number of high-school-age children abusing illegal substances has fallen, but marijuana use has inched upward, and drug offenders continue to flood the nation's courts.
"The success of our efforts to reduce the flow of drugs is largely dependent on our ability to reduce demand for them," Mr Kerlikowske said. "Our nation's drug problem is one of human suffering, and as a police officer but also in my own family, I have experienced the effects that drugs can have." Mr Kerlikowske's stepson, Jeffrey, was arrested on drug charges.
Mr Kerlikowske's deputy is expected to be A. Thomas McLellan, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania medical college and the chief executive of the Treatment Research Institute in Philadelphia.
During the presidential election campaign, Mr Obama promised to offer first-time, non-violent offenders a chance to serve their sentences in a rehabilitation centre rather than jail.
This is actually interesting. Cutting the demand would sharply reduce the incentive to supply. I just do not know how it would work. How much would it cost to deter using treatment and what arbitrary standard would we use to adjudicate drug offenses? Who gets jail time and who gets treatment? This is probably going to end up being a class and race issue.
President Obama outlined his reform agenda yesterday for the nation's public schools in a speech before the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. He promoted extending the school day, adopting performance pay for teachers, and encouraging the proliferation of charter schools, to name a few.
But what did he say about math, you are wondering.
Here it is - the math report. Obama's speech mentioned math education explicitly four times:
1. He reminded the nation that economic development and academic achievement go hand in hand and that the federal government can play a significant role.
"Investments in math and science under President Eisenhower gave new opportunities to young scientists and engineers all across the country. It made possible somebody like a Sergei Brin to attend graduate school and found an upstart company called Google that would forever change our world," he said.
2. He pointed out that American 8th graders rank in 9th place on international math tests and that Singapore's middle-schoolers outperform ours three to one.
3. He said that children who graduate from early childhood education programs are more likely to score higher in reading and math, more likely to graduate from high school and attend college, more likely to hold a job, and more likely to earn more in that job.
4. He addressed teacher shortages in math and science and said he supports offering extra pay to teachers in those areas, as well as new ways to recruit teachers into the profession and incentives to stay in teaching, particularly in high-poverty schools.
This might be one of the few agendas in which I agree with Obama. Too many teachers are teachers because of the relative ease of the position. They get the same pay check if two children learn and the same pay check if none learn. Equal opportunity for education is the true way to expand the middle class again and help sustainability in the economy.
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has told international aviation and maritime authorities that it will launch a satellite in early April, the North’s official news agency and a news agency in the South reported on Thursday.
North Korea’s neighbors and Western nations believe the launching is actually cover for testing a long-range missile capable of reaching the American mainland. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said such a launching would be “very unhelpful.”
The North’s state-run Korea Central News Agency said the country notified the international organizations to “ensure the safety of flights and sea vessels.”
It did not disclose a date. But South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, quoting unidentified government sources, said the North had told the international organizations that the launching would be between April 4 and 8.
Well done, Hillary. It would be "unhelpful."
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday issued his first signing statement, reserving a right to bypass dozens of provisions in a $410 billion government spending bill even as he signed it into law.

The latest on President Obama, the new administration and other news from Washington and around the nation. Join the discussion.
In the statement — directions to executive-branch officials about how to carry out the legislation — Mr. Obama instructed them to view most of the disputed provisions as merely advisory and nonbinding, saying they were unconstitutional intrusions on his own powers.
Mr. Obama’s instructions followed by two days his order to government officials that they not rely on any of PresidentGeorge W. Bush’s provision-bypassing signing statements without first consulting Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. In that order, Mr. Obama said he would continue the practice of issuing signing statements, though “with caution and restraint, based only on interpretations of the Constitution that are well founded.”
One of the budget bill’s provisions that Mr. Obama said he could circumvent concerns United Nations peacekeeping missions. It says money may not be spent on any such mission if it entails putting United States troops under a foreign commander, unless Mr. Obama’s military advisers so recommend.
“This provision,” Mr. Obama wrote, “raises constitutional concerns by constraining my choice of particular persons to perform specific command functions in military missions, by conditioning the exercise of my authority as commander in chief on the recommendations of subordinates within the military chain of command, and by constraining my diplomatic negotiating authority.”
He also raised concerns about a section that establishes whistle-blower protections for federal employees who give information to Congress.
“I do not interpret this provision,” he wrote, “to detract from my authority to direct the heads of executive departments to supervise, control and correct employees’ communications with the Congress in cases where such communications would be unlawful or would reveal information that is properly privileged or otherwise confidential.”
In addition, the president singled out four areas of the bill that direct negotiations with other countries on certain matters, and three that issue directions about what agencies should include in budget requests.
But a majority of the challenged provisions are those allowing money to be reallocated to a different program only with the approval of a Congressional committee. Mr. Obama called the provisions “impermissible forms of legislative aggrandizement” and declared that while executive-branch officials would notify lawmakers of any reallocation, “spending decisions shall not be treated as dependent on the approval of Congressional committees.”
David M. Golove, a law professor at New York University who specializes in executive powers, said the prerogatives invoked by Mr. Obama were relatively uncontroversial. Still, Mr. Golove said he was surprised by the scope and detail of the objections.
“It reflects an executive branch that wishes to demonstrate publicly a commitment to upholding all of the president’s claimed constitutional prerogatives,” he said, “even when the intrusions are trivial or just a matter of infelicitous wording.”
Presidents began using signing statements in the 19th century, but the practice became controversial under Mr. Bush, who challenged more legislative provisions than all previous presidents combined.
Many of Mr. Bush’s signing statements made arguments similar to those made Wednesday by Mr. Obama. But Mr. Bush invoked particularly contentious claims of executive authority, as when he declared that a ban on torture violated his powers as commander in chief.
The Bush administration defended its use of signing statements as lawful and appropriate. The American Bar Association, on the other hand, condemned them as “contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers,” and called on presidents to stop using them.
Other legal specialists have argued that there is a role for the practice so long as presidents invoke only mainstream legal theories. They say Congress sometimes includes minor constitutional flaws in important bills that are impractical to veto.