The Wonk Monkey had a great parent-teacher conference yesterday. Thing 2 is doing great in school. The Monkey is happy, very happy.
So, lets start off with some disturbing news… the fetuses of 2,000 illegal abortions were found at a Thai Buddhist Temple.
Democratic donors are looking to setup a funding operation much like the Republicans did in the last election cycle.
The the poverty rate was kept from reaching record levels due to extended unemployment benefits in 2009 according to the CBO.
Extended unemployment insurance put in place to fight the recession prevented the poverty rate from rising to 15.4 percent in 2009, a level unseen since the 1960s, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The government announced in September that that the 2009 poverty rate had risen to 14.3 percent from 13.2 percent the previous year.
Interestingly charitable giving has been slumping because… charities are getting too much monkey from Uncle Sam.
Each year, the government gives thousands of grants to public-spirited nonprofits, many of which depend on these funds for a huge chunk of their budgets. But this “crowds out” private donors, according to a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Public Economics. For each $10,000 in annual government grant money, the study shows, nonprofits cut fundraising by an estimated $1,370, and private charitable donations fell by about $7,271.
This dynamic shows how much charities dislike shaking cups for cash. It also suggests that another golden age of philanthropy is a simple fix away. University of California, San Diego, economist James Andreoni, who coauthored the study, notes that if the government made continued fundraising a condition of every grant, the charitable pot might be supersized.
This time Joe Scarborough has been suspended for campaign contributions.
What does it say about the electorate that over half of them don’t know the Republicans only took over the House and not the Senate.
Only 46 percent of respondents in a Pew Research poll released Thursday knew that the GOP had taken over only the House, while a mere 38 percent can identify Ohio Republican John Boehner as the incoming speaker. Three times as many young people, under age 30, could properly identify Google's new phone software, Android, as could identify Boehner.
President Obama was dressed down yesterday by some of the Senate Democrats.
Added one veteran senator: “It was the most frank exchange of views I’ve ever seen.”
Several senators expressed the opinion that Obama needed to show more passion, while party liberals renewed their complaint that Obama should abandon the pretense of bipartisanship in the face of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s intransigence and what they consider the Kentucky Republican’s blatantly political tactics aimed at making Obama a one-term president.
The Justice Department can no longer force defendants to sign a document that would forever bar the defendant from requesting DNA testing in order to prove their innocence.
The Health Industry is against the repeal of the new healthcare law.
He says the reason is that the more people there were without health insurance, the more that threatened the industry financially. In other words, its entire business model was about to fall apart.
"The health care industry needs paying customers and insured customers to make that business model work," he says. "To the extent that Republicans push repeal, they are threatening the bottom line of the health care industry, and I think they're going to find that many elements of the health care industry are going to oppose repeal."
Apparently a bunch of children who were brought to see Megamind got to see the opening of a completely different movie… Saw 3D.
Net Neutrality is moving forward in the FCC
It is Mostly True that cutting earmarks will not reduce spending.
Indirectly, earmarks may have an I'll-scratch-your-back-if-you-scratch-mine effect that pushes spending upward. Under the status quo, however, our experts agreed that Lugar is largely correct -- ending earmarks won't directly reduce spending, only re-direct it. There are other plausible reasons to advocate for an earmark ban, such as ending unseemly horse-trading with taxpayer dollars. But without a thorough overhaul of the budgeting process, saving money directly isn't one of them. We rate Lugar's statement Mostly True.
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