The advances are defying a U.S. housing slump that has sent national values to an eight-year low. Share sales such as the IPO of LinkedIn -- which doubled on its first day of trading -- and an expected offering from Facebook will fuel a boom in some Silicon Valley cities into 2013, said Kenneth Rosen, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.Bloomberg
When road train technology is commercialized, a driver equipped with platooning software could use an in-vehicle navigation screen to find the nearest platoon and drive to the end of it. At that point, the car could wirelessly connect to the platoon and take over braking, acceleration, and steering, and drivers could safety start texting or watching a movie.Volvo technologists speak:
"What we want to try to do is take cars that we have in production today and modify them as little as possible in order to allow them to drive on the road-train platoon project," says Coelingh.
SACRAMENTO – Gov. Jerry Brown's recent talk to the California State Association of Counties was more meandering and disjointed than usual, but the governor stuck to his talking points: Unless California voters approve tax extensions, they must get used to greatly diminished public services. Without at least the tax extensions, he said, "we will get a radical restructuring of what we are."
This summarizes in a phrase the ideology of Brown, the Democratic Party and the unions that spent at least $30 million electing him governor. To them, California's greatness does not come from our entrepreneurship. It is not based in any concept of individual freedom. It doesn't stem from the state's history or its people. It is about government. To cut any of it means a fundamental restructuring in who we are as a people. Cutting or reforming government, in their view, makes us less decent and less humane. OCR
PG&E Hit Hard By Antioch Copper TheftsIn Fresno, where about 30% of the citizens are permanently disabled from meth, has this problem.
With no bipartisan deal in sight, legislative Democrats are poised to approve a majority-vote budget today that cuts deeper into universities, raises car registration fees and extends a quarter-cent sales tax.
According to an Assembly budget aide authorized to brief the press, the spending plan closes a remaining $9.6 billion deficit through accounting maneuvers, cuts, additional fees, delayed payments and a revamped plan to sell state properties. Several solutions could face legal challenges that threaten their viability SacBee
"We will not allow cuts to seniors' benefits," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. WAVE3So, Ms. Bachmann, hit Schumer for generational warfare; rather than promote it yourself.
Senate Democrats promised that any Medicare cuts in the measure would come from health care providers rather than cutting back benefits.WAVE3Democrats are claiming that Congress must devise a scheme to get ore productivity from Medicare doctors before they will sign on to any cuts.
The hard line came even as Republicans showed at least some willingness to kill special interest tax breaks this year with a vote on ending the annual $5 billion ethanol tax subsidy.The US Senate had no choice but to continue the subsidies, remember, California gets only 1/5 of a vote in the Senate, and we mostly grow food and cotton. Farmers who benefit from the subsidy have 5-8 times the Senate voting power as California.
"I think we we're going to be in a position, hopefully by the end of the month, by the Fourth of July recess, we have something to take to the leaders and actually begin to get down to the implementation piece of the kind of legislation," Biden said. "That's the goal."Biden already insists that he will be too late.
“Iceland has come through this surprisingly well,” said Lars Christensen, chief analyst at Danske Bank A/S in Copenhagen. “2009 was a defining year for how the crisis developed. The euro-zone countries took a step in the wrong direction by loosening their fiscal policies. Iceland didn’t do that because its only option was to tighten fiscal policies. Two years later, Iceland has moved quite a way away from its troubles while Greece is trying to unwind what it did Bloomberg
The Icelandic government had a relatively healthy balance, with sovereign debt of 28% of GDP and a budget surplus of 6% of GDP (2007).[91] Debt is now 90% of GDP and Iceland has a budget deficit.[92] WikiIceland had spare debt capacity, enough capacity to get them through. Not any more, but their government was less dependent on the banker.
There’s not really a revenue problem. Democrats correctly point out that federal tax revenues are now just 16.5 percent of GDP, well below the post–World War II average of roughly 18 percent. This would have meant a bigger budget deficit than usual even if spending hadn’t exploded in recent years. But much of that decline is due to the economic slowdown, not to the Bush tax cuts or other policy changes. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office predicts that as economic growth returns, federal tax revenues will grow by an average of 7.3 percent annually over the next ten years. By the end of the decade, taxes will have pushed back through the 18 percent level, and be headed toward 20 percent — all without any changes in tax policy. NRO
When the group reconvenes Wednesday morning, Van Hollen said they will turn to consideration of a spending trigger - a mechanism to ensure that spending caps are adhered to by lawmakers. Under the provision - details of which would still have to be settled by lawmakers - if an agreed upon spending cap was breached, there would be automatic budget cuts administered by the Office of Management and Budget to bring spending back into line.Obama wants to violate the trigger agreed to by the Social Security comission:
A congressional aide briefed on the Tuesday meeting said that White House officials brought up the idea of a payroll tax holiday for employers as a means to stimulate private sector job growth.Congress will default, that is what legislatures do. Bondholders need not fear defaults, they need to encourage more defaults, not less. Once we finally accept that Congressional default is the norm, then we can go about setting Treasury rates to reflect reality.
A tax deal struck last year included a one-year payroll tax holiday for employees. In recent days, White House officials have floated the idea of extending that measure past the end of the year, and expanding it to also include a lower payroll tax rate for firm owners.
The proposal could be a difficult sell to Republicans concerned with spending levels. It would lower taxes on businesses, but would also add to the budget deficit, while the entire tenor of the Biden-led talks has been to reduce federal spending.
