Do nothing and balance the budget

The do-nothing plan: now worth $7.1 trillion
[Via Ezra Klein]

 

 

In the past, I’ve talked about the “do-nothing plan” for deficit reduction: Congress heads home to spend more time with their campaign contributors, and the Bush tax cuts automatically expire, the 1997 Balanced Budget Act’s scheduled Medicare cuts kick in, the Affordable Care Act is implemented, and the budget moves roughly into balance. It’s not an ideal way to balance the budget, but it helps clarify that the deficit is the result of votes Congress expects to cast over the next few years. If, instead of casting those votes, they do nothing, or pay for the things they choose to do, the deficit mostly disappears.

The last few years have added new elements to the do-nothing plan: the trigger, for instance, and various temporary tax cuts Congress has been extending. James Horney of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities ran the numbers for my colleague E. J. Dionne, and he says the do-nothing plan would now lead to $7.1 trillion in deficit reduction — more than even the Fiscal Commission envisioned. Here’s how it breaks down:

— $3.3 trillion from letting temporary income and estate tax cuts enacted in 2001, 2003, 2009, and 2010 expire on schedule at the end of 2012 (presuming Congress also lets relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax expire, as noted below);

— $0.8 trillion from allowing other temporary tax cuts (the “extenders” that Congress has regularly extended on a “temporary” basis) expire on schedule;

— $0.3 trillion from letting cuts in Medicare physician reimbursements scheduled under current law (required under the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate formula enacted in 1997, but which have been postponed since 2003) take effect;

— $0.7 trillion from letting the temporary increase in the exemption amount under the Alternative Minimum Tax expire, thereby returning the exemption to the level in effect in 2001;

— $1.2 trillion from letting the sequestration of spending required if the Joint Committee does not produce $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction take effect; and

— $0.9 trillion in lower interest payments on the debt as a result of the deficit reduction achieved from not extending these current policies.

Put another way, all we need to do to solve our deficit problem — or, more accurately, avoid creating one — is to enforce PAYGO rules in Congress.

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This is something that has been brought up a lot but this is a great figure. There is really no need for major changes in the budget. If Congress does nothing at all, we can come very close to budget balance in about 3 years.

Will the Do-Nothing Congress have the courage to do-nothing?

MS: ‘If true, we ‘re imbeciles. If false, we’re imbeciles.’

Microsoft Says Windows Phones Have Had Siri-Like Functionality for Over a Year
[Via Daring Fireball]

Mikey Campbell, AppleInsider:

In an interview last week with Forbes, Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie said that Siri’s capabilities are not Apple-specific, and notes that Windows Phone’s similar “Tellme” technology has been functional for over a year.

“The Tellme facility’s been in the Windows 7 phone for more than a year,” Mundie said. “So I mean I just think people are infatuated with Apple announcing [Siri].”

That’s a curious thing to say. As Jean-Louis Gassée notes on Twitter:

If true: We’re imbeciles
If false: We’re imbeciles.

I’ve played with Tellme on Windows Phone 7 and I’d say it’s a lot like Voice Control on iOS. Similar in scope, and at least as accurate, if not better. Not bad at all — but not Siri.

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TellMe is not Siri. It is limited in what it does and requires you to use a very specific syntax to get an action. Not like Siri at all.

MS has put up a possible vision of what TellMe might look like which is awfully similar to Siri. But it is not here yet.

Apple is already shipping something that is still vaporware for MS. Looks like they are going back to FUD as a marketing scheme.

How Davis police officer will be seen for years because the Web

The pepper-spraying cop gets Photoshop justice | Xeni Jardin
[Via Comment is free: Cif America | guardian.co.uk]

The casual way a policeman pepper-sprayed protesting students at UC Davis has caused outrage but also a mocking response

Nature abhors a vacuum, it is said; and the internet abhors unexplained dissonance. When photographs emerged of police lieutenant John Pike pepper-spraying University of California Davis students, it wasn’t just the violence in those images that captured the world’s attention – it was the surreal juxtaposition of that violence with Pike’s oddly casual body language and facial expression.

Photoshop out the students from that picture with your mind. Forget about Pike’s uniform, let’s say he’s just wearing street clothes. Now, instead of a policeman spraying a less-lethal chemical weapon down the throats of peacefully seated 20-year-olds, you might be able to interpret this tableau as a figure sauntering through a garden, spraying weeds. Or maybe he’s your paunchy, moustached uncle, nonchalantly dousing bugs in the basement with insecticide.

One way the internet deals with that kind of upsetting dissonance is to mock it. And that’s what the internet has done with Pike. The “casually pepper-spraying cop” is now a meme, a kind of folk art or shared visual joke that is open to sharing and reinterpretation by anyone. This particular meme has spread with unusual velocity – in part, I imagine, because the subject matter is just as weird as it is upsetting.

Even Kamran Loghman, one of the men who developed pepper spray as a weapon with the FBI in the 1980s, had a hard time reconciling it. “I have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents,” Loghman told the New York Times. And Loghman might add “insouciant” to that list of adjectives. I mean, look at the guy. He’s not braced for imminent attack by a foe; he does not move with tension as if navigating a hostile environment. He’s administering punishment, and his face says: “Meh.”

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The Web often presents its own justice. In this case, it has taken the dissonance conveyed by the casual manner in which Officer Pike inflicted pain and added it to various pictures. By doing to it changes that very casualness into something else, sometimes sophomoric

and sometimes more profound.

Officer Pike will always be known for this from now on. Not a way I would want to be remembered.

Pepper spray not meant for casual use

from Total Dick-head

Pepper Spray’s Fallout, From Crowd Control to Mocking Images
[Via NYT > NYTimes.com Home]

Images of campus police at the University of California, Davis, spraying the Kool-Aid-colored orange compound on docile protesters have made pepper spray a topic of national debate.

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Pepper spray was developed for use by police against imminent physical attack, not as a tool for painful compliance or punishment. One of the developer’s of the technology, who worked with the FBI to create this ‘non-lethal;’ tool stated in the article:

“I have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents,” Mr. Loghman said in an interview.

Mr. Loghman, who also helped develop guidelines for police departments using the spray, said that use-of-force manuals generally advise that pepper spray is appropriate only if a person is physically threatening a police officer or another person.

This ‘tool’ can have severe effects on some people, causing permanent damage to their health. In prisons, the use of pepper spray is tightly controlled. A sitting prisoner is, by definition, not a threat. If pepper spray is to be used, doctors are required to be present in order to deal with anyone who might have a severe reaction to the pepper spray.

Any officer in prison who treated a sitting prisoner as these students were treated would have been very rapidly booted out even before the lawsuits happened.

Painful torture to force compliance is not what these tools were developed for.

Yet we have seen police spray directly into and down people’s throats from close range. Their faces and clothes are drenched in the potent chemical. Not to disperse, not to control but to punish with intense pain.

And there was no medical attention paid to any of the students. Some were helped by other students. Others were just man-handled away by the police, never receiving any medical attention.. Prisoners apparently have more rights than peaceful students.

People have died after being pepper sprayed. Many have been hospitalized. Severe asthma attacks are common.Yet these cops just see it as no different than spraying weeds. No thought that their actions could severely harm the peaceful students.

Even when used properly, pepper spray is not non-lethal but only less-than-lethal. And it is not being used properly.

At Davis, the students were sitting down and posed no direct threat to the police. But the police had their pepper spray canisters so they just decided to use them – making their life easier but putting people’s health into jeopardy. To punish the students for making the officer’s life difficult.

As can easily be seen in the vital video, the police were not trapped. They could simply step over the students. Several of them did. The pepper spray was to teach them a lesson.

Louis CK is alway a hoot

‘The Next Steve Jobs Will Totally Be a Chick’
[Via Daring Fireball]

Louis C.K., talking to Fast Company:

The next Steve Jobs will totally be a chick, because girls are No. 2 — and No. 2 always wins in America. Apple was a No. 2 company for years, and Apple embodies a lot of what have been defined as feminine traits: an emphasis on intuitive design, intellect, a strong sense of creativity, and that striving to always make the greatest version of something. Traditionally, men are more like Microsoft, where they’ll just make a fake version of what that chick made, then beat the shit out of her and try to intimidate everybody into using their product.

(Via Jim Dalrymple.)

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As humor usually does, there is some truth here. I think organizations that follow what Louis states are feminine traits will be more successful in the coming years.