News Briefs

News you can use all day

(Petunia and Pals) The casual sexism of the Other Dumb One.

• A Lost Decade - A new report from the Congressional Budget Office says that Austerity has already hurt the US economy:

  “[E]conomic activity will expand slowly this year, with real GDP growing by just 1.4 percent,” according to CBO’s projections. “That slow growth reflects a combination of ongoing improvement in underlying economic factors and fiscal tightening that has already begun or is scheduled to occur-including the expiration of a 2 percentage-point cut in the Social Security payroll tax, an increase in tax rates on income above certain thresholds, and scheduled automatic reductions in federal spending. That subdued economic growth will limit businesses’ need to hire additional workers, thereby causing the unemployment rate to stay near 8 percent this year, CBO projects.”

  "In other words, intentional efforts to reduce annual deficits and stabilize the debt are working. But if you retrain your gaze from the government’s balance sheet to the real economy, you’ll see the impact of that austerity is fewer people working and slower growth. According to CBO, the recovery won’t really pick up steam until next year, and the economy won’t have recovered until the end of 2017, when it will reach its output potential, and unemployment will fall to 5.5 percent.

  Which of course means that the cure is... more austerity! (Think Progress)

• Special Delivery - Speaking of Austerity, the Republican-led Congress' plan to destroy the US Postal Service continues (remember the 75-year in advance retirement system that they mandated?): USPS will "discontinue Saturday mail delivery in a cost-saving measure that is expected to save the agency up to $2 billion per year. According to the Associated Press, package delivery will continue six days a week, but regular mail will be limited to Monday to Friday delivery." (Raw Story)
• More changes - The Clothes Iron game piece in the Monopoly pantheon of tokens is no more. It is being replaced with a cat. (USA Today)

--Tengrain

Comments

[Capt. Bat Guano]

Personally speaking I won't miss getting mail on Saturday, the mail doesn't bring me good news ever anyway, it's one day off from weeding through a pile of junk mail only to find another fucking bill from one of my usury credit card companies or a price gouge in the form of a utility bill.

[watertiger]

So much for Article I, Sec. 8, clause 7 of the Constitution.

[Mr. Flibble]

Now, now, WT. You know that it's just a goddamned piece of paper.

[watertiger]

Heh, Mr. Flibble. Now if we only had a way to privatize the Constitution.

[pansypoo]

this is the publikan plan. they may have lost, but they will try to make gains in 2014 on obama FAILURE. make him the LAST BLACK PRESIDENT.