Hooray for the PCT! Wilderness, wild rivers, and long-distance trails are what make this country special, not bombs and corporations. Nothing spells “freedom” like the opportunity to get out in the backcountry.

“We’ve got to get away from the “Family finances at the kitchen table” crap. As knee jerk resonant as it is, it is completely inaccurate as model for a national economy.”

Yes, and not only that, it’s totally inaccurate in a very basic way in its internal logic. The “families have to balance their budgets” schtick completely ignores the fact that almost no one can buy a house without going into massive debt, sometimes upwards of 200%+ of family “GDP” — a level of debt, which at a national level, would of course provoke howls of rage and six-guns blazing.

We don’t even need to go into the student debt debacle to show the absurdity of the family-as-nation blather, even accepting the ridiculous assumption that they’re alike on any level.

The reports that call this mainly a dumb math error are missing the significance of the data exclusion mentioned here, plus additional biased weighting of data in favor of R&R’s conclusion. There’s a very large of dose of selectivity in the study’s treatment of data, which smells of dishonesty.

Great, concise post.

The image of Lindsay Graham being “aroused” hit a 10.0 on the EEEWWWWW! factor.

Keller has proven dozens of times that he’s a complete ass, of the media-plutocrat-posing-as-a-liberal species.

Cousin Guido needs to go tell corporate-derriere-smoochin’ Baucus he’ll break all his limbs if he doesn’t ‘retire’ from the Senate.

❖ Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has a dim view of gun control regulations “because future budget cuts in cities will constrain the size and quality of police forces across the country”. He’s foreseeing further budget cuts?

… and maybe unregulated militias to fill the vacuum?

Just to clarify, the “Who Pays” study linked under Money Matters USA is not about all taxes, but only state and local taxes. It’s a very interesting read: of the 10 most regressive states, 8 are red, and two are blue states (WA and IL) with flat or low-rate income taxes and heavy reliance on sales taxes. The most progressive four states (plus D.C.) are all blue.

The differences that matter are how low the income tax rates are, how flat the income tax structure is, and how much of the total bite comes from consumption taxes … i.e., sales and excise taxes. In other words, it’s exactly what you thought all along.

The sales tax angle is huge: I live in a state with an essentially flat income tax, and the top effective rate is only” ~ 20% lower than the bottom, while in states heavily dependent on sales taxes, it’s more like 50% lower.

The intent of the state-by-state Repub attempt to gut income taxes and pile on sales taxes, and the result if they win, couldn’t be any clearer.

Foreign aid is all but nothing in the context of the entire federal budget; not that it couldn’t take some trimming (e.g.,Israel), but defense, especially the zillion overseas bases, sure offers a big target with little downside.

As far as Yahoo goes … I’d suggest not going there at all. That site is the collection point for the biggest yahoos and crazies on earth.

Wigwam: no, in the terms David is using, the deficit would increase ~ $490B per year ($4.9T divided by 10). As I understand it, the convention of doing the math on the basis of the effects over 10 years comes from the way the CBO scores budget proposals; a lot of times in the press you’ll just see the number without any reference to how many years the writer means, but they should always clarify whether it’s 10 years or 1 year (the other ‘sometimes convention’ that’s used).

Somewhat similarly, one of the favorite perversions of the deficit scolds is to throw out some ridiculous number like $75 trillion as “unfunded liabilities” of whatever program they’re trying to kill (never “defense,” of course) without revealing how many years they’ve projected ahead (75? 100?),and without any qualifier that who the hell knows what GDP, wages, income, population, age-class ratios, and all those other pesky stats and demographics that would put their moronic projection in context, making it look even more ridiculous.